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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: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday March 05 2019, @01:45PM
Eh, yes and no. I do think it's getting worse lately.
Problem number one is lyrics. Soft, instrumental Muzak is one thing; freakin' musicals are quite a bit worse. They went from stuff specifically designed to be unobtrusive to stuff designed to be catchy and get stuck in your head for days.
Problem number two is that they KEEP. GETTING. LOUDER. Went out for lunch with my girlfriend a few weeks ago and we couldn't even speak to each other because the music was so damn loud that you'd have to bend over the table and shout in each others' ears just to be heard! And it's not like it was a freakin' fast food place where they're trying to encourage you to use the drive through or get out of there quickly, it's the kind of place where they're gonna try to shove a $10 dessert on you and some overpriced cocktails to go with it. Not like it was late night at a bar either, it was freakin' LUNCH!
Problem number three is the decline of traditional radio. When I was a kid, most of the department stores in town would be playing an actual radio station. Now they thrown one CD on repeat for months at a time. That's a hell of a lot worse. Radio stations do repeat, but they change over time and their playlists tend to be more than one hour long.
I know a couple places that let the employees take turns picking the music...mostly the more hipster kind of shops, the kind of place Starbucks likes to pretend to be...although I can certainly understand why Corporate would be afraid of doing that. But if Starbucks is going to be controlling all of the music in all of their shops from one central source, they could at least put a bit of effort into doing a halfway decent job of it rather than just cramming in a half dozen of the latest memes and dialing the volume up to 11...