SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Submitted via IRC for Bytram
Starbucks' music is driving employees nuts. A writer says it's a workers' rights issue | CBC Radio
You may not give a second thought to the tunes spinning on a constant loop at your favourite café or coffee shop, but one writer and podcaster who had to listen to repetitive music for years while working in bars and restaurants argues it's a serious workers' rights issue.
"[It's] the same system that's used to ... flood people out of, you know, the Branch Davidian in Waco or was used on terror suspects in Guantanamo — they use the repetition of music," Adam Johnson told The Current's Anna Maria Tremonti.
"I'm not suggesting that working at Applebee's is the same as being at Guantanamo, but the principle's the same."
Earlier this year, irritated Starbucks employees took to Reddit to rage about how they had to listen to the same songs from the Broadway hit musical Hamilton on repeat while on the job. One user wrote that if they heard a Hamilton song one more time, "I'm getting a ladder and ripping out all of our speakers from the ceiling."
Johnson argues it wouldn't take years of research to understand that "yes, playing the same music over and over again has a deleterious effect on one's mental well-being."
(Score: 5, Informative) by SomeGuy on Monday March 04 2019, @03:14PM (6 children)
Don't know about Starbucks, but I've been in a few restaurants were the music was so loud everyone had to yell so the people taking the orders could hear. In those cases the idea probably was to "encourage" people to use the drive-through instead of eating in. More than a few hours exposed to that and anyone would go deaf. Not to mention half of the music was that awful cell-phone sounding autotuned shit the consumetards like these days.
But even quiet music gets annoying after a while. I absolutely hate shopping at Publix during December because apparently they feel some obligation to play only the exact same dozen or so crapmass songs over and over and over. Frosty-the-fucking-snowman was not good enough the first ten million times they played it, so lets play it again!
Where was that X-files episode where they kept playing the same elevator music over and over to torcher Mulder?
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 04 2019, @04:00PM (1 child)
torture*
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Monday March 04 2019, @08:28PM
Someguy might be onto something with "torcher". It kind of looks like what it does.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 04 2019, @05:58PM
If you are in Starbucks, send a message to their customer service complaining about the noise. I don't know if they read it, but they sent me a $5 credit. If they start having to pay people to visit their stores, maybe some genius will figure out there's something wrong. Then corporate can ride in like heroes and save the business to bonuses all round.
(Score: 2) by schad on Monday March 04 2019, @07:58PM (1 child)
I don't remember it happening in the X-Files, but it did happen in Millennium (which was by the same people) in the episode A Room with No View [wikipedia.org]. The song was Love is Blue [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Monday March 04 2019, @11:03PM
Thanks, I think that is it. No wonder I never could find any info searching for it. It was probably one of those shows I watched while flipping channels between multiple shows anyway. Forgot about that "Millennium" spin off, it wasn't a very memorable series.
Now I'll spend another 20 years trying to get that tune out of my head. :)
(Score: 3, Funny) by ShadowSystems on Monday March 04 2019, @09:31PM
I used to work at a very large indoor mall. The store I worked for was an open air kiosk in the center of the main aisle, noplace to go, noplace to hide, "customers to the left of me! customers to the right of me! oh dear gods they're EVERYWHERE!"
The mall had the requisite crappy muzack playing system that all the customers thought was "quaint" & us employees thought was shit scraped from Satan's asshole.
Crapmas muzack started some time around JULY and played nonstop right through the New Year.
Ten million repetitions of "Frosty the fucking snowman"? We got that before mall security even opened the damned doors first thing in the morning to let the customers in.
We weren't allowed to wear earplugs because that would prevent us from hearing the food/drink orders of our customers.
"Noise Cancelling headphones" weren't a commonplace thing yet & I didn't have the $$$$$ required to buy a set anyway.
It got to the point where I was about THIS||CLOSE to snapping & shooting up the mall with a Gattling Cannon... !With Tracers! ...because of that crappy muzack.
Every time a customer said "Smile! It's almost Christmas!" (or something like it) we weren't allowed to strangle them with their own tongue, rip off their head, & mount it on a sign that read "FUCK CHRISTMAS!" as A Warning To Others.
Oh NO, that would be bad for business!
Really? And causing your employees to want to get themselves put up on Emergency Late Breaking News while we slaughter hundreds of thousands of your customers is a GOOD IDEA?
*Coughs, takes a deep breath*
I finally quit that job & went somewhere quiet, no music allowed, & even loud talking was grounds for getting the bums rush out the door.
That's right, I got a job at a library.
Aaaaahhhh... No. Fucking. Crapmas. Muzack!
*Flops over backwards & makes a snow angel in Frosty's corpse*
Did I mention that it made me loathe Christmas with the incandescent rage of a trillion suns?
I tend to scream obscene lyric replacements over any crapmas songs folks try to sing around me.
(I make Bob Rivers & Andrew Dice Clay sound like Doctor Seuss by comparison.)
If I get arrested I plan on using a Temporary Insanity defense & using my time at the mall as the reason why.
"I'm sorry Your Honour, they started singing about that damned snowman & I just reached for the FlameThrower. By the time I came to it was already far too late."
*Ominous cackle*