Too Much Noise

Pet peeves of the week (so far--I may be able to come up with some more before the week is over):

Parents who turn their children loose in stores, restaurants, malls, etc., and ignore them while they behave like wild animals.

Last Saturday I went to one of the local hardware stores to pick up a couple of things, and while I was there I saw a couple of kids--a girl about eight or nine and a brother one or two years younger--chasing each other around the store, squealing and talking loudly, and generally annoying everyone in the immediate vicinity (and it's not a big store, so you couldn't help but notice them). I overheard several of the employees talking about them while I was doing my shopping, so I think they must have been causing problems for a little while before I got there. One employee said he saw the brother take a hammer off of one of the displays and pound on the floor with it. Where was their mother while all of this was going on? Shopping in another part of the store and not paying any attention to her kids, as far as I could tell.

(Eventually their mother did catch up with them and get them under control--I saw her headed toward the front of the store with both of them and a third child in tow--but I still wonder if she decided to discipline them on her own or if one of the employees had to ask her to do it.)

Anyone who thinks that whatever he's listening to on his car stereo is so incredibly cool that he MUST share it with everyone within five miles of his car.

It's bad enough when someone who does this lives in my neighborhood (right around the corner, in fact) and I get to listen to his music (and I use the term very loosely--all I can hear is a loud thump-thump-thump) several times a week, sometimes in the middle of the night. It's worse when I get to hear it coming from a car close to me when I'm stopped at a red light. Last Sunday, though, I got to hear it at the drive-through at the local Whataburger.

The guy who pulled in right behind me had his stereo cranked up as loud as it would go, and he only turned it off long enough to turn in his order. After that, he turned it up again, and I got to listen to my car windows rattle while I was waiting on my food. I'm sure the Whataburger employees weren't real thrilled about having to listen to it, either.

(I'm pretty sure Oklahoma City has a city ordinance that deals with noise problems like this. Why isn't it being enforced more often?)