While I am certainly not the first to note it, I feel like the awfulness of wall-mounted TVs in waiting rooms really cannot be overstated.
I am the only person sitting in this car dealership service department waiting area. The TV up on the wall is blaring one of these stupid History Channel shows about antiques dealers. I would turn it off—or at least turn down the volume—but it is too high up to reach the buttons or power cable. I’ve got my AirPods with noise-cancellation turned on and I am listening to Boris’s 2022 album Heavy Rocks turned up pretty loud, and it still is only just drowning out the TV.
I guess maybe I should at least be glad it is not tuned to Fox News?
The presumption here seems to be that we all need something to keep us occupied while we sit here waiting, but the idea that it needs to be a TV on the wall seems like a leftover from ten or fifteen years ago. Isn’t the conventional wisdom that we are all glued to our smartphones?
Then again, maybe I’m just a weirdo. The statistics about how much time people spend with the TV on in their homes make me wonder if many of them need it as background noise and feel uncomfortable without it.