Please Stop Playa-ing

As a whole, I’m not a fan of Burning Man. It’s a you-do-you thing. Don’t push it and its values on me, and I won’t lecture you on how terrible its environmental impact is each year.

I work at a popular small breakfast restaurant in a hippy beach town. Each year, just after Burning Man, we get an influx of people who haven’t adjusted back to real life yet.

For example, lots of people walk in without shoes/pants and try to hug all the staff and random customers. One year, I s*** you not, two kids sat on the floor in the middle of a narrow walkway during a weekend rush to read our specials board. They genuinely seemed surprised when I told them they couldn’t do that.

Today really bothered me, though. I had a very sweet old couple in my section. They had a lot of trouble hearing over all the ambient noise in the restaurant (it can get surprisingly loud).

Two people were sitting at the table next to them, with just a very narrow planter box separating the tables. The new table was for two people who had just returned from Burning Man. They had a ukulele with them, and the girl started playing and singing. Not loud, mind you, but loud enough that it was bothering my sweet old couple. I asked the girl to stop or please step outside to work on her song. She just glared and me and stopped.

Minutes later, she started playing and singing again, but even softer this time. I was making my coffee rounds, and my elderly couple asked if they could switch tables. The pitch on the ukulele was bothering his hearing aid.

I was annoyed at this point and curtly told the annoying singer to please take it outside. She, to my surprise, snapped back at me. Saying she was playing as quietly as she could and singing just above a whisper.

I snapped straight back and told her that I could still hear her, and the point was, I asked her to stop, not continue, but quieter.