Dear Old Guy welcomes letters on all subjects, including love, marriage, child rearing, even basic plumbing and medical advice. What he doesn’t know, he is happy to make up. After all, he’s just an opinionated Old Guy.

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Dear Old Guy,

Can you help me please with a pet peeve? No, it’s more than a pet peeve. It’s a hardcore annoyance that I know I share with a good many people. Now don’t get me wrong, I love music. All kinds. But there has been an increasingly disturbing trend that music is being played in all public spaces. Even when it’s only moderately loud it’s still hard to tune it out, leaving me incapable of having my own thoughts. It’s played in this manner in many of the places I frequent for what used to be a peaceful lunch, coffee and newspaper, intimate supper.

Has it really gotten to the point where people constantly need to be spoon fed media? It all seems so unnatural. When I ask for the volume to be turned down at some of the places I go I am often met with blank stares or rude comments. Is there a way for everyday people to lash out and put a stop to the incessant barrage of sound? Please, Dear Old Guy, you must know what I’m talking about!

Signed, Turn down the volume, damn it!

Dear Turn down the volume,

I could not have expressed your sentiments better if I had written your letter myself! Let me give you an example of a local experience of mine.

There is a prepared food joint near my home. It’s a convenient place with several tables for people to sit and enjoy their food if they should wish to. I used to frequent the place daily to read, eat drink and sometimes even work on this column. I noticed, about a little over a year ago, the volume of the music had leapt upward… Cheap tinny speakers playing a variety of pop stations including some that should have their mouths washed out with soap.

As often as not there were, amongst the patrons, discussions and remarks over by the coffee pots about the irritating loudness and style of the music. Because I have a hard time keeping my mouth shut I often found myself asking if the volume could be turned down. Depending who was on staff, sometimes I would be obliged and other times the excuses ranged from Well, the kitchen staff like it, it helps them work or I’m not allowed to change it to finally being told by the owner of this particular establishment, a place which considers itself to be classy with its fine wines and expensive cheeses, Why don’t you go to the library!

I know at least five regular customers who have stopped going to this business because of the music. I have yet to meet anyone who goes there for the music. But this is the thing the owner of said establishment is not thinking about. If I stop going there to spend my $8 a day for 300 days a year then their bottom line is less my $2,400 annually. Now multiply that by the five other people who used to be regulars and that’s $14,400 per year that the store is not earning. Probably more.

Unfortunately a good many places are playing loud and inappropriate music. Maybe they think it’s classy. Maybe they don’t care or, perhaps, there is some misguided concept that their personal choice of sounds is good for business. Ah, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

To further respond to Turn down the volume, let me say you are not alone. I’ll start with the excerpt from a piece in the New York Times by Roz Warren:

I recently met a friend for lunch at a popular bistro new to both of us. We arrived and quickly found seats by the window. The décor was lovely, and the menu looked terrific. But the music was way too loud. We wanted to enjoy a conversation, not shout at each other over Taylor Swift. So we politely asked our waiter if he would turn down the music. “Sure,” he said, and strode off. After a moment, the music changed — it became even louder.

When another waiter cruised by, we asked if he knew how to work the sound system.

“Of course,” he said.

“Could you turn the music down a little?” we asked.

“No problem,” he said.

We waited. The music continued at deafening levels. So we gave up and left. We ended up eating at a drab little place around the corner. The food was barely adequate and the ambiance nil, but we could enjoy a chat instead of hollering at each other over “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together.”

Were we being oversensitive? The next day, I asked around. Turns out that not one of my boomer pals appreciates loud background music. Not one of us enters a restaurant, encounters a blasting soundtrack, and thinks: “Great! I won’t be able to hear myself think in here, let alone have an intelligent conversation. I LOVE this place.”

In Bon Appétit, Jason Kessler wrote:

“Just about everyone who has ever eaten in restaurants that play music have complained about the music.  Be it overeager mariachis bands at your local cantina or the smooth jazz stylings of Kenny G cranked through the speakers at your neighborhood bistro, music can make dining a very unpleasant experience.”

The writer goes on to offer this advice:

Top 3 Rules for Music in Restaurants:

#1 Music should be set at a volume that you can notice only when you’re really trying to listen.

#2 If the experience of your restaurant is enhanced by music, please share it in a way that doesn’t make me wonder if I’ve stumbled into a concert instead of a restaurant.

#3 Match the tone of the music with the tone of your restaurant.  Mournful violin concertos don’t mix well with diners and hip-hop doesn’t blend in at steakhouses.  Choose music to match your restaurant’s identity and do it in a way that’s unobtrusive to a diner’s experience.

Dear Old Guy advises all business owners to Google the subject of the effects of music on their customers; but here, to make it easy here’s an article from Psychology Today, which ran this story. By Dr. Neel Burton it was published just this past summer… http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/hide-and-seek/201407/music-in-restaurants .

Now, here’s my advice for owners of all shops, stores and restaurants.

1. Your choice to play music in the front of the shop so that it’s loud enough for your kitchen staff to enjoy in the back is a stupid idea. Your employees are there because they have to be, your customers don’t have to be there. Remember who you are trying to appeal to.

2. Music is a very personal choice. If you’re in a business that depends on the general public, play nothing. You are hurting your bottom line by broadcasting, at any volume, the same music that would be played at a teen shop at the mall.

3. If you have older customers remember that background music renders their hearing aids useless because the device can’t discern the sound from your speakers from conversation. Everything gets amplified!

4. If you have a place where parents bring kids, don’t play music that has foul language.

5. If you must play something keep it so low that a customer has to go out of their way to hear it. It should not be played loudly for your staff to enjoy!

6. It’s been proven that if you want patron to take their time and spend more money, play soothing music at a very low volume.

7. And I’ll add this thought. In this day of iPods, if someone has the need to constantly have sounds pumped into their brain they can do so all by their lonesome. They don’t come to your place of business to have you act as a disc jockey.

Finally, least we forget, the United States Marines blasted loud pop music to get the dictator General Manuel Noriega to surrender. Me? I will not surrender! —O.G.

Oh, before I forget. If any of my readers have something to add concerning today’s subject please write in… both of you. Yes Paul, I always enjoy your input. And Barbara, I’m sure you have something to say as well. You don’t have to wait until you see me at the grocery store!