My wife and I were sitting in the coffee shop/dining area of our grocery store not long ago, eating breakfast before we bought our groceries. There's a gentleman who's usually there on the same weekend days that we are, and he watches videos on his phone very loudly. It was clearly annoying everyone around, but this being Minnesota, nobody was going to bother him about it (instead they just do little glances over their shoulder or the "OPE" eyes at each other lol).

Finally, one older woman gets up and walks over to him. My wife and I are like "Oh shit, she's gonna let him have it, here it comes." She taps him on the shoulder and says "Excuse me, can you turn that down? It's very loud." And you know what he did? He said "Oh, sorry," and turned it down.

She said thanks and went back to her seat, simple as that.

Thanks for sharing your story about how simple normal requests lead to simple normal social outcomes.

The isolation and atomization of modern individualized living has led people to be so controlled by their anti-social anxieties, fear, and loathing of other people, that they and OP won't even try.

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