Things That Grind My Gears

As a libertarian, I am not exactly a law-and-order guy. I favor shorter sentences, civil liberties, and the end of mass incarceration all around. And I think a lot of behavior that is currently criminalized should not be criminalized.

Except for playing videos on your phone with the sound on in a restaurant. The penalty for that should be summary execution.

Two to the chest, and one to the head. Filed in deleted items. I’m no Dear Abby, but this is basic human decency.

You see, when you are watching a video on your phone with the sound on, it may sound good a foot away from the phone, but further than that, it just sounds like noise pollution, a cacophonous racket of static and noise. So when you’re sitting in a nice restaurant—or even a not-so-nice restaurant—and some dillweed two tables over has to show Jackass videos to his friend, you’re hoping that troopers will parachute in from the sky like Minority Report, and turn the guy into a fine red mist. It is such an obvious violation of etiquette and social norms, the people who do this cannot be trusted to reproduce and spread their genetic material across the earth. I ended a friendship over this, once. Went out to dinner with a guy at Friendly’s (a dump) and he starts playing Trump videos off YouTube. Never spoke to him again. It’s been at least seven years, and I still haven’t spoken to him. People that stupid should not be allowed to exist.

Don’t get me wrong, there have been situations in which I wanted to play a video in a restaurant. I’d be out to dinner with some guy, and we’d be talking about something, and I’d be like, oh! I have to show you this video. But then I check myself, and say, “You know what, I’ll play this for you later. Or I’ll send you the link. But I’m not going to play it in a restaurant.” Because I’m a good person. People who play videos on their phones with the sound on in restaurants are horrible people. If you’re willing to do something like this, you’re predisposed to doing all sorts of other things. I would bet that the median credit score of a video-player is at least one standard deviation below that of a non-video-player. It’s just low class. The lowest of low class. We’re talking about Shameless levels of low class. I’m actually going to a super-nice restaurant tonight. There probably won’t be a video-player there.

But it isn’t just restaurants. Airports, too, and airplanes. I fly American Airlines a lot, and the airline has just begun including some language in their safety demonstration that you’re not allowed to play audio on devices. Use headphones. The foregoing also applies to kids watching cartoons on iPads. First of all, giving a kid an iPad in a restaurant isn’t the best parenting, but if it’s for the benefit of the other diners, I’m all for it, as long as the sound is off. I’ve been on flights next to a four-year-old with an iPad on full volume for five hours. I wanted to eat a gun. They do manufacture headphones for little kids. I don’t want to hear the argument about how headphones can hurt sensitive ears. They make safety headphones for kids. Use them. Apparently, the younger generation has better etiquette than we do. One of my interns told me that if one of his goon friends was playing a video with the sound on, they’d just yell HEADPHONES over and over again until the dickhead got the hint. The Zoomers are policing themselves. There is hope for the future, after all.

I do have a very passive-aggressive solution. If someone is playing a video with the sound on in a restaurant, I will go onto YouTube on my phone and pull up THE MOST ANNOYING SOUND 10 HOURS and turn the volume on my phone all the way up. Trust me, it is a very annoying sound. The offender would turn and look at me, figure out that he was being a penis, and turn off the video. On one occasion, the offender asked if I could turn off the sound on my phone. “Make you a deal,” I said. “I’ll turn mine off if you turn yours off.” Problem solved. Sometimes passive-aggressiveness works. It’s better than going up to the guy, and saying, “Hey buttmunch, can you please turn off the video on your phone,” and then it turns into a shouting match. If you can’t go through, go around.

While we’re on the subject of things that grind my gears, I will add that the behavior of children in restaurants has deteriorated significantly over the years. Children who stand on the seat should be disciplined. I can tell you that at the age of three, if I stood on the seat in a restaurant, I would have been beaten senseless. And the worst is where you’re in a booth in a restaurant, and the little kid in the booth in front of you is standing on his seat, peering over the back of the booth, and watching every bite you take. One note—I seem to remember restaurants in the 70s and 80s having plastic booster chairs for little kids—I haven’t seen one of those in years. That would go a long way towards solving the problem.

As I mentioned previously, I don’t have kids, but I have all kinds of opinions on how to raise kids. Kids are kids—temper tantrums and meltdowns happen. The solution is to swiftly swoop up the kid under your arm like a football and head outside to the parking lot until he calms down. If the kid doesn’t calm down, your night is over. These are the sacrifices you make when you have kids—probably no eating out for the first five years. You signed up for it. One parenting philosophy is that you should ignore the meltdown, figuring the it will burn itself out eventually, which teaches the child to grow up because nobody is going to come to the rescue. Please don’t try to teach this lesson in a crowded restaurant. I’m sure there are some people reading this you are like, fuck you, I’ll do what I want. Well, you are part of the problem. 50 other people are miserable because you decided to carry out this child-rearing experiment on a Friday night in public.

I fully admit that I am cranky about these sorts of things. My wife and I life in a very quiet house. We don’t yell, we don’t raise our voices, we don’t have the TV on loud, and the only music is when I DJ about once a month. Part of the problem is that in Myrtle Beach there is only one nice restaurant. There are sushi places in Myrtle Beach, some good ones, and it never fails that you’ll be in there and someone—sometimes an adult—is drumming with the chopsticks. I don’t know if you’ve ever had this experience, when you’re in a five-star place, like, $200 a person, and they wheel up a highchair at the table next to you. Holy fuck. And sometimes you are pleasantly surprised—the kids behave. But Myrtle Beach is full of children, especially in the summer. It’s inescapable. I haven’t had a meal without crying in months.

Basically, all of etiquette comes down to being considerate to other people, including strangers. There are other people in this world aside from you. I find that political liberals tend to be more mindful about their behavior in public than conservatives, which should not come as a surprise, since conservatives have a strong I’ll do what I want streak. Let women off the elevator first, and never shake hands sitting down.  I encourage you to put your own etiquette rules in the comments.