Last week, I spent a few nights at the Renaissance hotel in Sao Paulo where I have been 10+ times over the past decade (how the rates have risen!).
The club lounge at the hotel is nice and spacious, although it was very busy midweek when quite a few people appeared to have business meetings there.
I don’t mind business meetings or usual background noise, but absolutely cannot stand when people are streaming content using mobile devices and not using headphone or earbuds.
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May be lounges should start providing headphones just as the fitness centers usually do?
Conclusion
Based on the sound that I heard, I believe that this fella was streaming a documentary about Seaworld and orcas that I have also seen. It was a good one, but I would have preferred not listening to it.
Its the same in airport lounges.
I was waiting in the KLM Crown lounge at Schipol yesterday evening (Schengen side) and a chap who did nothing to dismiss the stereotype of “Loud American person” was having a WebEx call. The ENTIRE lounge managed to learn that “the Dutch guy did ok work”, “Steve was a dick for asking for a pay rise”, “we need to review this key data, and decided to tell the figures” (seems like a big contract!) and so on.
He annoys everyone in the lounge, but also could have shared key information with a another company!
Great entertainment! At least he did not do “name dropping”? Sometimes people seem to have money but no common sense.
Even my kids 9 and 12 now (but also 3-4 years back) use headphones or earplugs. it’s what i drilled them as i also annoy the sounds of calls, streaming or whatever.
What happened when you asked him to plug in his headphones? Or did you just suffer and then post the whine? I had the same thing in a lounge at LHR recently and the guy sheepishly apologised, saying he had no headphones, then turned the volume way down. So then I gave him a free spare set of cheap earbuds I had in my bag! 😀
How timely an article, I was flying BKK to DEL last night and in the Thai lounge at BKK had exactly the same ….. REALLY ANNOYING. So much so I got up an offered him my headphone, THEN he got the message. Add this to the guy next to me who sounded like he was trying to compose a symphony using his mouth while ‘slurping’ soup and I needed to find another seat !
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with politely requesting that the person use headphones … have done (1x each) in a gym, airplane, and lounge. Each time, the person was fine with the request and somewhat apologetic. Doesn’t hurt to ask nicely.
Another reason to avoid hotel/airport lounges, aside from the mass invasion of “credit-card with lounge entry privilege” owners….
Not just lounges, everywhere. The idiot who seems to think that headphones are not necessary are pervasive across the whole of society. Children on the bus. Children playing nintendo’s on the train. Teenagers and businessmen in lounges. To me its an idiot indicator, or “my parents are idiots”. To be fair to the children, they’re usually with their grandparents who are probably deaf, and the kids don’t know any better. But the adults…
“that guy” seems to follow everywhere. It must be so nice to live life without respecting other people. While traveling I go out of my not to bother other people in hopes that the respect will be shared. I really hope this dude sees the rant and adjusts his level of rudeness in the future.