Piano BF ignores GF, refuses to stop playing music at small cafe

Would you break up with a partner just because they played music in public?

The internet is urging this 28-year-old woman to leave her musician BF behind!

There’s a time and a place to play music, and people can’t agree on what the right response would’ve been here… This woman’s BF spotted a piano at a coffee shop and went right over to it.

He began playing tunes for the whole restaurant to hear. But that’s not exactly the problem here, as she detailed below

There was a piano in a small cafe full of ~20 people eating/talking/working…

It does seem obvious that if there’s a piano, people will try to play it. That’s why a lot of places seem to put a sign on it requesting no one play, or put up barriers to block potential musicians from playing their tunes. So functionally, yes, you have a piano that no one is ever allowed to play.

But I feel like it must be to protect the employees’ sanity. Imagine you go into work at as a barista and a 5-year-old starts slamming on the piano keys while you’re trying to hear people’s coffee orders. Then some teens come in and giggle and play a few random notes each. Then a budding piano player comes in and plays “Hot Cross Buns” over and over again, since it’s the only song they know. And by that point, you’ve only been at work for 30 minutes, and you’re already piano’d out for the day.

When this person’s BF played the piano nicely, I bet it was a big relief to the workers (and patrons). If you can’t control who’s tickling the ivories, you’re putting everyone else in the grips of the worst piano players known to mankind.

People had a lot of questions to ask

Is ignoring your partner “putting in the work”? I don’t know about that…

A coffee shop isn’t the best place for a piano, anyway. Aren’t people trying to talk or do work?

Mathaznias Was there a sign that says not to play the piano? If it there was no indication that it wasn’t to be played and in that 15 minutes no staff said anything to him (the annoyed server doesn’t really mean much) then its not a big issue for the other people, mostly you it seems. That annoyance is valid, but also not a big enough deal to post here honestly. I’d also wonder how old you guys are

Great point! This guy was being quite presumptuous

jillcrosslandpiano From the diversity of the comments, I wonder how much is just that cultural customs in different countries differ. I am in the UK, a piano in a cafe or restaurant would NOT be regarded as being in a public place. Nobody would dream of playing it without asking specific permission. Only a piano in a space which had no other purpose than being a thoroughfare e.g. a railway station foyer would ever get played randomly.…Read more by Remy Millisky