Listening to music on a plane without headphones? Jail time! | Cruising Altitude

Who among us hasn’t had this experience? The person behind you on a long-haul flight is playing music on their phone without earbuds or watching videos on their tablet for all the world to hear.

Horrible.

It’s truly one of my biggest pet peeves. Even if we like the same music, I don’t want to hear your garbled audio from three rows away. Put on your headphones and let the rest of us enjoy our flight in relative peace.

I’ve said more than once to friends that this kind of thing should be worthy of jail time and while I realize that’s a bit of an overreaction, it is extremely frustrating to have your personal bubble popped in this inescapable way. It’s the kind of thing that only leads to heightened stress in a sealed metal tube hurtling through the sky, and makes flying less enjoyable for everyone – even for us avgeeks who think of planes as our happy place.

“The idea of people being inconsiderate, this is not new behavior,” etiquette expert Nick Leighton, who co-hosts the “Were You Raised by Wolves?” podcast told me. “It goes back thousands of years to: why are people rude?”

But having noise-making devices at hand 24/7 has certainly made this brand of etiquette breach more common.

“We are living our lives through screens and when we do that, we become less aware of the real world around us,” Leighton said. “Our feeds are about us and what we’re doing. Because of that, we do forget that we’re not always the main character in every situation.”

Why is public noise so annoying?

I know I’m not alone in finding other people’s music – or video game sound effects – particularly annoying in public places, and Leighton told me I’m right to feel this way.

“One of the fundamental principles of etiquette is that we need to be mindful of people around us,” he said. “Somehow, we have forgotten that auditory space is also space, and you are also intruding on somebody’s auditory space.”

During a flight I took in January, the woman behind me was aggressively playing a game on her seat back screen, which was embedded in the headrest of my seat. For almost an hour, I felt her tapping away with her index finger, and I silently stewed about how annoying it was.

We can all agree that that kind of behavior is inconsiderate if not unacceptable, and Leighton said noise leak is more or less the same thing.

Then he said this, and at first, I thought he was joking:

“They should know that they are ripping the fabric of society apart, and they should stop.”

I almost laughed before he went on.

“Nobody’s going to die, this is not catastrophic, but it’s corrosive. It’s the rust on the machinery that makes society work, and at some point, the machinery will break down,” he said. “We don’t want to live in a lawless, etiquette-free society, that’s not a world we want to live in, and so it is important for everybody to do their part.”

And really, that gets to the heart of the matter, doesn’t it?

There’s nothing dangerous about someone else’s music, but the annoyance of it is enough to make it wrong.

“Being disrespectful of communal spaces, that’s what it comes down to,” Leighton said. “You’re imposing your taste on other people. That’s just not what we want to do.”

I’d add that few people, if any, want it done to them, either.

More etiquette tips: How to make flying more pleasant for everyone | Cruising Altitude

What can you do if you have a noisy seat neighbor on a flight?

Unfortunately, your options beyond some serious side eye are limited and often a little impotent.

Leighton said you should first consider if the noisemaker seems like they might be open to a request to put on headphones. If so, he said, you get one shot.

“On an airplane, you do have to sit next to somebody for hours, we don’t want to get on their bad side on minute one,” he said. “In the etiquette world, we make one request, and it’s not a negotiation … If they say no, I’m not going to push it further. That’s not the hill I’m going to die on.”

He said if you do want to make the request, make sure to do it in a neutral, nonjudgmental way. You don’t want to escalate the situation by asking – or demanding – too aggressively.

Leighton added that you can subtly ask a flight attendant to intervene if it seems like you won’t have any luck trying yourself – but remember, flight attendants are there to keep you safe, so forcing a passenger to turn down the volume won’t be their primary task on any flight.

Despite my deeply-held wishes, we also can’t put these inconsiderate people in jail.

“If only we had that power,” Leighton said.

But he did create an etiquette crime reporting form, which you can access. Write in about your petty annoyances next time you travel, and Leighton said your experience could be featured on his podcast.

If your crime report is selected, don’t become an etiquette criminal yourself. Put on your dang headphones before listening to the episode.

Zach Wichter is a travel reporter for USA TODAY based in New York. You can reach him at zwichter@usatoday.com

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Put on your headphones to be a good seat neighbor | Cruising Altitude