It's my birthday and I'm sitting in a posh restaurant in the Cotswolds, UK, enjoying lunch with my parents. As I take a bite of my crab cocktail, my mother leans across to tell me something, but I can't hear a word. The hushed timbre of her voice is drowned out by the not-so-dulcet tones of a family on a speakerphone call at the next table.
The conversation at our table stops dead, our voices impossible to hear over the tinny sound of the caller whose voice is playing full-blast to an unwilling audience. None of us asked for this. Multiple diners at their table raise their voices to be heard over each other on the call. Not to be a diva on my birthday (if not today, when else?), but I didn't come to spend hundreds on a fancy lunch to sit and listen to strangers' family conference calls.
My next move? Well, I do as any passive aggressive Brit does: I sigh loudly to convey my exasperation. It doesn't work. I relent: I ask our lovely waitress if we can move to a table outside in the sunshine — success, she's just laid a table on the terrace. Crisis averted. Birthday celebrations firmly back on track (kind of). We won't talk about the man sitting in the middle of the restaurant lawn who also took a phone call on speakerphone to his doctor. Love to eat my £36 chicken in mushroom sauce to the soundtrack of your private medical information. By this point I was bemused, and two glasses of wine deep and ready to dissociate from reality.
Unless you've got Pedro Pascal on the line, I don't want to hear it.
In all seriousness: when did speakerphone conversations in restaurants become acceptable? Unless you've got Pedro Pascal on the line, I don't want to hear it.
Six days later, it's my dad's birthday and we're surveying the menu in our local restaurant when I hear familiar sound just behind my head. "Darlingholmahaan...Nothing beats a Jet2 holiday..."
This time, it's TikToks at full volume. Is this some sort of sick joke? I turn around to get a good look at the culprits: a table of two men who are idly scrolling through their phones, not an AirPod in sight. Not again. Another meal with the tinny sound of another person's phone irritating my eardrums. As my father announced, "What is the world coming to?"
Important caveat: d/Deaf people and people with disabilities who use speakerphone for accessibility reasons are, of course, excluded from this conversation on etiquette.
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Can we establish some ground rules for telephone etiquette while dining out?
Unless you have a very good reason, get the hell off speakerphone at the table. No one wants to hear your loud-ass phone call.
If you need to take a call, leave the table to minimise disruptions to your fellow diners.
If you can't tear yourself away from TikTok for longer than the duration of a dinner (and don't feel like talking to your companion), put your damn AirPods in.
No headphones? Scroll on silent mode and read the closed captions.
More broadly: consider whether the noise emanating your phone is a nuisance to others. Reflect on how you may feel?
Am I suddenly a curmudgeon? Am I Hugh Grant ranting about backpacks and water bottles? Maybe so! But, honestly, if this is the new normal in restaurants, I'm going to stay home.
