Tablets in restaurants with the sound up

[Reallyareyoukiddingme]

Help me understand please….
How selfish and lazy must you be to think it’s ok to come into a nice restaurant, sit and park your child in front of a tablet then put the sound up to max so everyone has to sit through the horror of Vampirina/Tinkerbell/some other Disney plus horror.
I am now kicking myself I didn’t say anything but was with my children (who were all happy with the restaurant provided colouring and actually talking to us) and didn’t want a fight.
I just can’t imagine how anyone can justify that kind of behaviour though? iPads I get, if you really need to use them. But seriously…..headphones?!

@Reallyareyoukiddingme

Some people are just rude, selfish, obnoxious arseholes!! We're just back from a UK holiday where, one night, having treated ourselves & teenagers to a meal in a pretty posh restaurant, we were subjected to a middle-aged, childless couple, having a lengthy, loud mobile phone video call with what seemed like their entire family!!

Lovely, quiet, tasteful atmosphere one minute, then an endless, loud, running commentary on the minutiae of their entire holiday the next - our 17yr old was the most outraged of all of us!!

This. If your kid can hear it, I can hear it and it's pissing me off, and everyone else within a ten metre radius.

Noise emitting tech, phones and screens, in public spaces are as anti social as smoking used to be before the ban.

^ This

Why not ask the manager to have a word?
The standard you ignore is the one that becomes the norm. Unless peoplexspeak up, we will all be on a race to the bottom

A PP who’s a restaurant manager explained why it’s not as simple as this sadly.

This is another pet hate of mine- people having video calls on speakerphone in public places. I was recently at a spa where a guy was doing this! Fortunately the staff told him to stop pretty quickly.

Should be restaurant policy to look out for the comfort and enjoyment of their customers. They should tell the parents to turn it down or leave.

We were out for late lunch recently just me and my partner. A rare kid free treat and the couple on the table next to us thought that they’d watch Wimbledon - possibly a final on their phone at volume, if they’d wanted to watch it that much not sure why they came out to lunch but it’s people who are entitled and think they can do what they want never mind the rest of us.

We got a bus at the weekend and some idiot was playing their tinny shit music disturbing everyone. We were saying eventually surely this will be banned like smoking is in an enclosed space. If you can afford a device you can afford head phones. I find it quite aggressive- the message is we really do not care about anyone around us.

@TheClawDecides

No the op is bringing her kids up well. iPads shouldn't be at tables, at home or in restaurants end of! Be as smug as you like op.

I can conclusively tell you mine were absolutely fine with colouring etc (smartphones hadn't been invented).

Restaurant staff should immediately step in though, we customers shouldn't have to confront people

We always use headphones with a tablet. Completely agree that it's so rude to have a tablet or phone on loud in a public space.
Those who are saying that kids shouldn't be on a tablet in a restaurant- last week we had to go for a big meal for a celebration with our 2 year old DD. We hate going for those types of meals, they're too long, they're boring for her, but we always get guilted into going. We brought a bag of tricks but after 2 hours, she was tired, bored and needed something else so we gave her a tablet. We tried really hard not to use it!

YANBU OP. Selfish with peak entitlement. I stopped going to chain restaurants because of this behaviour.

Poor parenting. Headphones or nothing on. 🤷‍♀️

We had this on a plane yesterday. The mum put earplugs in and her child was watching a really loud animated film. I thought he hadn’t realised that his headphones weren’t in so turned around to tell him and realised he didn’t have them. I was expecting the staff to tell him to turn it off or down when they came along but they didn’t. It was obvious that we’d turned around to see where the noise was coming from and the parent still didn’t turn it off.

There’s lots of reasons why I didn’t speak to the parent. I was alone with my 2 young children and worried about them turning aggressive as I’ve previously had this on a flight and they were in a large family group all staying at the same place as us. I have a child with additional needs who gets very anxious on a flight as it is and didn’t want to make things worse. There was no way of speaking to the flight attendant discretely. Just saying it’s not always easy or safe to ask people to change their behaviour.

Without headphones this really annoys me. With headphones it doesn’t affect me so I try not to let it wind me up- it’s not what I’d do with my children, but I have no idea what’s going on for those families and several of my friends with SEN children couldn’t manage without it.

We would definitely complain in a managed space like restaurant/ plane. In the bus it could be dangerous so we didn’t. The type who is happy to piss off everyone else is the type more likely to be violent i would
think.

When we complained in France it was an elderly couple watching tv in a restaurant very loudly! They were absolutely baffled when the manager told them to turn it off.

Kids pre iPad we ate out and entertained
them so admit I have limited sympathy for the “we must shove our toddler in front of a screen” brigade.

Got to admire your optimism that restaurant staff (or any service staff in general) will have any 'enforcement' they try in relation standards of behaviour actually observed.

The culture of treating service staff like shit because the customer is always right means little respect is shown to them in general, never mind people who are entitled enough to do this sort of thing in the first place.

This type of situation is an unfortunate result of that culture.

And blaming the staff for someone else's shit behaviour just encourages them to continue, they're not facing any concequences from it, no one is holding them to account, except the staff who no one respects anyway, so where's the incentive to change the behaviour if someone else is taking the blame?

I'm surprised they wouldn't do an announcement at least.

It's what I used to do when I worked on the railway platforms and saw people having a cheeky fag/vape.

Yanbu, see also phones on trains (adults, too!) Thankfully it doesn't happen often but as a regular commuter, it gives me the rage.

Full disclaimer though: 8yo dd is on the cusp of growing out of colouring books at tables (ds never had any interest). She's also nd and we continue the search for a set of headphones she'll tolerate (she has sensory processing problems so often things just don't feel right to her). She does use her tablet at tables sometimes but the volume is switched low (or off if she's playing a game). Most of the time it's not a problem, she's happy to chat or we play a verbal game, but occasionally she uses it to re-regulate/ zone out if she's become overwhelmed. We're always sensitive to others though (as is she).