Sunday, July 04, 2010

Cracker Barrel Hell

cracker barrel july 4

I am reasonably confident that if you took ambient noise level readings at all of the major restaurant franchises, you’d get the highest numbers at Cracker Barrel. The acoustics are absolutely horrible and the staff seem oblivious to the noise they make clearing tables and dragging wooden chairs across the tile floor. Throw in out-of-control screaming children and you have a cacophony that eclipses even Chuck E. Cheese’s.

My wife had a hankering for a Cracker Barrel breakfast this morning, so that’s where we ended up.

There was, of course, a bored toddler a couple of tables over who amused himself by screaming, “ E, i, e, i, o!” over and over, except he did it in an Arkansas accent: “Ay, ah, ay, ah, aow.”

But that was Pachelbel’s Canon compared with the obnoxious nasal, grating, ear-stabbing voice of the girl at the next table. She was there with a couple – maybe one of them was her sibling. I can’t imagine why they brought her along. They had lunch, but she didn’t order anything. So with no food to put into her mouth, she ran it incessantly. She even lapsed into song at one point.

It was a sufficiently bizarre example of social obliviousness to make a good skit for Saturday Night Live.

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