I like music as much as anyone but if you can’t understand the waiter… what’s the point? I was in a Buca di Beppo in St. Paul on a Sunday afternoon that had wonderful music, chiefly Sinatra, Dean Martin, etc. but the volume was beyond belief. We literally could not communicate with the waitress without shouting. I will never go back.
Local Bakers Square…If you want to avoid the stupid radio rock at near stadium level you have to make sure to sit by the windows. Then there is the “booth from hell”. Real punishment. The background music is in your face and they are busing dishes into the back of you booth and you are getting the full benefit of the ruckus in the open kitchen. You expect uproar in a sports bar. Who goes to a Bakers Square to rock out?
I was in this thread and they kept blaring “She’s Not There.”
When I worked at Tower Records in the SF Bay Area and in Seattle, the store manager or supervisor would often let regular employees choose the six CD’s on rotation for that shift. We can choose any CD’s available in our stacks as long as it was fairly recent and a variety of major music genres are represented.
Not the same, but yes, they have background music. Some will have several TVs on, which may or may not be tuned to the same channel, and whatever’s coming off the speakers is actually something else. Personally, if a bar or restaurant has TVs, I prefer to have the soundtrack match the images. In Spain sometimes there is a curious situation when some sports match is being shown in a minority-language or foreign-language channel, and bars will have the TV set to that channel but the sound from a radio station reporting on that same game in Spanish.
Most Spanish restaurants and bar-restaurants have it low enough for normal conversation; bars which don’t serve food bigger than tapas are likely to have it louder; bars/clubs which don’t serve any food will be loudest.
What sort of music do zombies prefer? Brain Salad Surgery - Wikipedia
I just wish my gym wouldn’t do it. 95% of the people have headphone on anyway, and they play the music so loud, I can overhear it even with the headphones on
I have had waiters complain about this, too – unhappy customers don’t tip. They have explained that it is sometimes an error by the people who designed the restaurant. They provided only one music system, with one volume control, for both the public seating area and the back kitchen area. The kitchen is noisy, so the employees there turn the music up loud enough for them to hear it. That leaves it too loud out in the public dining room. A good manager would deal with this. But many of these places do not have a ‘good’ manager in place.
I’m annoyed by the trend in fast food places to have TV’s in the dining area (usually blaring Fox news). I’ve quit going to a nearby Burger King because I can’t find a quiet place to eat.
It was my understanding that fast food places in particular played background music with a quick beat in an effort to get people to wolf down the food faster and make room for more customers.
~VOW
The chain-restaurant I worked in as a student used to play mellow music during the slow periods (get the customer to relax, enjoy, have another drink) and more upbeat music during the busy periods (sit, order, eat, get out).