There’s a man on my train this morning, and he’s listening to stuff out loud on his phone, like fully out loud, not even slightly subtle. The train is in Britain. He keeps listening to 5 seconds of an annoying song, then switching to another song. It sort of sounds like kids TV music. He appears dressed to go work in a fancy office or something, and this is a morning commuter train, so I don’t think he’s escaped from a prison or mental hospital.
Anyway, amongst myself and another couple of hundred quiet passengers, we’ve tried everything:
- tutting and rolling our eyes
- harrumphing, whingeing and sighing
- when a bloke got on the train with headphones on, someone said loudly “Isn’t it great when someone wears headphones? They can listen to whatever they like and nobody else has to hear it”
- sometimes it stops for a minute, and there’s a widespread muttering of “Ooh, thank god that’s over with”
- followed by an en-masse groan when it starts again “Oh no, not this again!”
- a lady on the phone saying loudly “Sorry, I can’t hear what you’re saying, because someone is being inconsiderate and playing music really loudly”
- saying to one another, loudly enough for the man to hear “isn’t it annoying when someone plays their music out loud? I wish he’d stop doing that”
- muttering aggressive words, under our breath, in his general direction “prick”, “wanker” “knobhead”, “bellend”
- Someone getting onto the train, and not sitting at his table and saying “God, I’d rather stand than sit next to that prick”, loud enough for him to hear.
- the ticket-checking man rolled his eyes, but didn’t do anything
I think generally we’re running out of ideas. I heard someone behind me mentioning they were thinking about “sparking him out”, and someone else had suggested they might grab his phone and throw it out the window.
I was toying with the idea of going nuclear on him, and directly but politely asking him to turn it down, but it’s a bit early for that kind of extreme behaviour. Perhaps I should throw something at his head?
Anyway, anyone who’s been in a similar situation have any suggestions?
[Update] The train got full, so people were standing all the way down the aisle. Three people sat on the table next to him.
Opposite him, an older woman stared at him and shook her head at him, in a gesture I interpreted as “I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed”. He put his phone in his pocket and stared out the window. I gave her the subtlest of nods, to communicate “thank you” and “good job”.
So we’re safe, this time - but I’m still interested in solutions, as something like this could happen again!
I’ve confronted somebody doing this in a packed commuter train once, back when I lived in the UK, and not only did the guy not care, but not a single person expressed support (everybody else just puts on the “this is nothing to do with me” body posture)
By comparisson, I’ve seen a similar situation in The Netherlands were pretty much the whole train rose up when the guy doing the noise refuse to turn it down after being politelly asked to do so.
Mind you, in my own native Portugal it’s the same shit as in the UK.
That said, politelly asking doesn’t hurt as people sometimes aren’t aware of how their noise is disturbing others, but yeah, if the other person is an asshole, in the UK (and Portugal) you’re going to be solo on this.
For a practical solution I suggest you get noise reduction headphones, which are also good to help you focus in the workplace if its noisy.
I think if someone is obtuse enough to not realise playing loud music on public transport is rude and disruptive you should consider the consequences before interacting with them. They are either 1. a bogan who thinks they’re top shit, or 2. someone with a questionable mental state. Either way, the chances of them turning the music off are low and the chances of fisticuffs higher than I’d like.
I’d rather roll my eyes and fork out the extra for noise-cancelling earphones.
I would’ve thought the same before I had interactions were I politelly told somebody their music/video-audio/whatever was too loud and they apologised and lowered it.
I know there’s a natural tendency to conclude others are just assholes for not even considering those around them (certainly, I have that tendency to conclude that), and yet such “anti-sociallity” does seem to be more of a range than an absolute characteristic and some people whilst they might not think “what about other people” upfront (or even it’s just situational and normally they do but not this time) will actually do so and adjust what they’re doing to take in account others.
But yeah, it’s a risk, not as much of the thing ending up in violence but more of the person asking ending up in a humiliating situation (unless you yourself escalate it to “fistcuffs”).
The Dutch love stepping in to any situation to make sure you’re “doing normal”, regardless if it concerns them or not. Sometimes it’s good like in this situation, sometimes less so.