Not a dive, not top of the line either. $15-20 entrees. A quiet place, not even music, just the ambience of people talking and eating.
Three sets of elderly couples, me, and three bankers whose loud conversation could clearly be heard in every corner of the place. Well, that’s OK, it’s not that interesting a conversation, I can mostly tune it out. What I couldn’t tune out was the adjective “fucking” in every other sentence from one of them.
I’ve certainly used the word before, and will certainly use it again, but barring the waiter dropping my entree in my lap, I won’t use it in a nice place, and I won’t use it around people that might be offended by it. There’s a time and a place, you know?
There’s a reason “they won’t make [you] a fucking manager”, and maybe someday you’ll figure out that they don’t trust you to behave yourself in public. Fucking asshole.
Based on previous experience, I’m going to guess that the banker in question had had too much to drink, either with his meal or at the bar beforehand. I have found that people who speak in a professional manner at work can really let it fly when their tongues are loosened by alcohol.
Doesn’t excuse his behavior at all, but might explain it.
We sit down to have a chat,
It’s F word this and F word that,
I can’t control how you young people,
Talk to one another,
But I don’t want to hear you use,
The F word with your mother!
There’s your problem right there - it’s not the language they were using, it’s the fact that they were speaking loud enough for everyone to hear them. I don’t care if the party sitting next to me is taking turns reciting from Samuel Delaney’s Hogg, so long as they keep the volume down.
Yeah, I’ve noticed the quality of the place doesn’t necessarily matter. I was having a drink in the bar area of a nice Michelin-starred place here in Chicago just a few weeks ago (not going there on my dime, which is even better), waiting for the rest of my party, when I realized that the gentleman next to me was “regaling” his companion with explicit details of exactly what excisions and other things his dermatologist had done to him. Ew.
Then again, sometimes it’s acoustics - though in your case, they surely should have become aware that they were the only source of noise in the place. Just a few nights ago, my husband and I were trying to have a nice dinner, and it felt like we were in on the same conversation as the couple at the table next to us. It didn’t help that they were naturally loud, but the acoustics in that place aren’t the best in certain spots, especially the corner we were stuck in. At least they left within about 15 minutes and that table didn’t get filled during the rest of our dinner.
In fact, the veal was fucking awesome. Much better than I expected for the price.