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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: 3, Funny) by isostatic on Monday March 04 2019, @01:35PM (15 children)
Play songs like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlbsexTmT_I [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday March 04 2019, @05:41PM (3 children)
Let's start the one-up game [youtube.com] ... gently.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Monday March 04 2019, @05:58PM
Ahh, That brings back the memories
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Monday March 04 2019, @06:14PM
I put it on loop.
(Score: 2) by DeVilla on Friday March 08 2019, @06:37AM
ok. I'll just leave this [youtube.com].
Had a friend in college who would pick something like this to hum once or twice in the quiet office bay. Maybe just the first half of the phrase. It was fun to see how many more minutes of silence would pass before someone would complain about him putting it their head.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Monday March 04 2019, @06:19PM
My contribution: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k85mRPqvMbE [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by SpockLogic on Monday March 04 2019, @06:25PM (2 children)
At Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom, the gulag is the "it's a small world" ride.
Overreacting is one thing, sticking your head up your ass hoping the problem goes away is another - edIII
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 04 2019, @10:41PM (1 child)
My wife got stuck in that ride for a couple hours. It was not pretty.
(Score: 2) by Webweasel on Tuesday March 05 2019, @10:46AM
Were whalers on the moon!
We carry a harpoon!
Oh their aint no whales!
So we tell tall tales!
And sing our whaling tune!
Priyom.org Number stations, Russian Military radio. "You are a bad, bad man. Do you have any other virtues?"-Runaway1956
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 04 2019, @06:38PM (2 children)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNnWpeV--4Q [youtube.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 04 2019, @06:42PM (1 child)
OH! found 10 hour version with translation. Enjoy!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 04 2019, @06:45PM
Forgot the link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jV88mJR0iZI [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Monday March 04 2019, @07:11PM
I figured it wouldn't be that, but I immediately thought of Wind Him Up [youtube.com]
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Monday March 04 2019, @09:23PM
And who could forget this classic [youtube.com]? Also make sure you watch this one [youtube.com] right after (or before) to cleanse your palate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 04 2019, @09:37PM
I've got the ultimate ear worm for you yanks! and i'm not even american!
Here goes:
Celino and Barnes, injury attorneys....
HAHAAA BUUUUURN IN PAIN!
(Score: 3, Funny) by RandomFactor on Tuesday March 05 2019, @12:47AM
Yes, bit I know a song that gets on EVERYBODY's nerves [youtube.com]
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 4, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Monday March 04 2019, @01:43PM (10 children)
Just wear some high quality ear plugs, and a pair of high quality ear muffs. For extra points, install speakers in your muffs, and play your favorite music to yourself. Then, you can stand at the counter, shouting, "EXCUSE ME, CAN YOU SPEAK A LITTLE LOUDER?"
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 1, Redundant) by kazzie on Monday March 04 2019, @02:21PM
And you can scribble any old name on the paper cups, just like you do now!
(Score: 3, Funny) by Phoenix666 on Monday March 04 2019, @02:46PM (4 children)
That would work pretty well these days, because if anyone complained about your inability to hear you could state, "I'm deaf, you insensitive clod!" If the customers or Starbucks persisted, the employees would chalk up an instant win with a discrimination lawsuit.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday March 04 2019, @04:52PM (3 children)
Except, I'm pretty sure it's illegal to lie to your employer, the judge, and the jury. It's a totally different situation, if you're actually deaf.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2, Troll) by Phoenix666 on Monday March 04 2019, @05:09PM
There are lies that everyone cares about, and there are other lies that nobody bothers with. If the lie you are telling falls within a narrative many people accept, it will be overlooked or excused in all kinds of creative ways.
Lying about disabilities or various flavors of victimhood has become common. Even candidates for president have done it, without much backlash. Lying about being deaf in a Starbucks to win sympathy or status as a member of a protected group rather seems to fall under that aegis.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 5, Touché) by FatPhil on Monday March 04 2019, @10:53PM (1 child)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday March 05 2019, @12:31AM
Proper hearing tests show that my high frequency response in my left ear falls off sharply at roughly between the pitches of typical male and female voices
That I at times experience dissociative trances really does lead others to conclude I’ve suddenly been struck deaf and blind, despite my own actual experience of idle mind wandering
Severe Tinnitus - not so much ringing in my ears but hissing - leads me to be completely unable to understand the speech of those who do not Enunciate, that is those who do not clearly separate each syllable of their every word.
Finally my largely solitary nature leads me to remain largely uncognizant of the presence of those of people that I have no specific requirement to take notice of.
All these put together lead me to actually live the same life as that of most deaf people.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 04 2019, @03:21PM (3 children)
> ...and ripping out all of our speakers from the ceiling."
Not repetitive, but annoying none the less: Used to live about 100 feet from a business that operated 24/7. At one of their side doors (facing my house) they had a PA horn tied to the internal building PA system. The horn might have been installed to call employees who stepped out for a smoke? After being woken up a few times and complaining to the manager a few times, I moved to direct action--it was easy to knock the wires off the elevated outdoor speaker with a short stick. Iirc, they reconnected them once, but after the second round they gave up and I could sleep through the night.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Monday March 04 2019, @04:59PM
Been there, and I empathize with you. I'm the employee, not the neighbor. We started out with 4 outdoor speakers. I couldn't figure out how to turn them down, so I cut wires to two of them. Those are the two that pointed toward the little subdivision across the road. Even after cutting those wires, the neighbors bitched to the city about being woke up at night. FINALLY, the bosses had a rheostat installed so they could cut the volume down to something reasonable.
Inside the building was just as bad. The speakers would blast your eardrums out if you were close to them. Investigation showed that some of the speakers could be dialed down, and others, like those outside had no dial. I cut some wires, and dialed the rest down. It took some time to get things "right".
Unlike most people, I got away with my alterations because I'm maintenance. No one had reason to be suspicious when Runaway was up in the scissor lift, messing with lights, and wiring.
And, I have no explanation for the previous occupant's need to blast out announcements at leventyleven decibels. It made no sense at all.
The sole mitigating circumstance for all that noise is, the subdivision was built after the plant was built. Meaning, the previous occupants didn't install all of those speakers with the intention of blowing away the neighbors.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday March 04 2019, @05:10PM (1 child)
Set up an LRAD to reflect it back at them.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 04 2019, @07:32PM
> Set up an LRAD to reflect it back at them.
Wrong target. AC here, the 24/7 business was owned by a rich guy who lived elsewhere. If I blasted (or even reflected) the PA speaker back at the brick building it would accomplish exactly nothing. Well, the "echo" might amuse/puzzle any smokers who were standing outside the door...
Which reminds me, that rich guy was in the (paper) phone book. One night when his company PA system woke me up at 4am, I called his house and woke him up!
(Score: 4, Funny) by DannyB on Monday March 04 2019, @02:39PM (10 children)
Most Starbucks locations don't seem to be in a physical arrangement where employees would commit suicide by jumping to their deaths.
Are there other protections Starbucks could use to prevent employees from committing suicide?
Managers within the organization would find it very undesirable to have to train new employees. New hires and training involve additional costs. The organization would rightfully want to protect itself from these costs.
Maybe there is a way to hypnotize employees to be immune to the music played in Starbucks? Or some kind of drug? But then, these would be an additional cost to the organization.
Young people won't believe you if you say you used to get Netflix by US Postal Mail.
(Score: 5, Funny) by JNCF on Monday March 04 2019, @02:48PM (1 child)
Lobotomies are cheap if you do them in-house.
(Score: 5, Funny) by DannyB on Monday March 04 2019, @03:03PM
I'm sorry, I had the impression that Starbucks employees already had undergone this procedure as part of their new employee conditioning.
Young people won't believe you if you say you used to get Netflix by US Postal Mail.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Phoenix666 on Monday March 04 2019, @02:51PM (2 children)
Hmm, well, stranger things have happened. There was, for example, the curious case of the Doublemeat Palace [fandom.com].
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by cykros on Monday March 04 2019, @04:11PM (1 child)
Some kind of drug? Like, maybe, all the free caffeine you can stomach? In my experience, once the mania sets in, listening to the same songs on repeat gets less annoying, and may even be something you start humming along to. Perhaps that's just me though.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday March 05 2019, @01:17AM
SHE’S KILLING ME SOFTLY AGAIN! MAKE IT STOP!
In many respects, for me to be manic feels just like not having slept in days.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday March 04 2019, @03:47PM (1 child)
Time / training oneself to ignore repetitive sounds. That said, I've only ever worked one job that had a short-looped repetitive track system and yes I hated it too. One might make up one's own lyrics and think them in your head. "Who pours? Who steams? Who makes your latte?" I'd presume that the store has an amp somewhere. Convince your manager that it should be unplugged for a couple of hours, and then tell anyone who asks "yeah, the thing just goes down once in awhile. It's weird!"
This sig for rent.
(Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Monday March 04 2019, @05:10PM
If Starbucks sound system is IoT based, then maybe some well-meaning customer could cause the sound to periodically go silent for a while.
Young people won't believe you if you say you used to get Netflix by US Postal Mail.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday March 04 2019, @05:56PM (1 child)
> Maybe there is a way to hypnotize employees to be immune to the music played in Starbucks? Or some kind of drug?
A friend of mine said the best sex she's ever had was when thoroughly stoned at a Starbucks because her boyfriend was closing the place.
Which goes to prove that it is indeed possible to have fun at that place.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Monday March 04 2019, @06:32PM
I would venture a guess that they had the annoying music turned off.
Young people won't believe you if you say you used to get Netflix by US Postal Mail.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Monday March 04 2019, @06:32PM
Most Starbucks locations don't seem to be in a physical arrangement where employees would commit suicide by jumping to their deaths.
They weren't even trying to kill themselves, just escape.
Unfortunately, where they landed is also a Starbucks so they failed.
(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*
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 04 2019, @03:35PM (1 child)
When I was young and worked in retail stores, the muzak playing was noticeable, but the songs were recent soft rock.
When I started working in real jobs, I didn't have to listen to someone else's music, because generally they don't pipe in music in the computer industry.
But when times were tough in 2001, I had to take a job outside of the big city at a utility, and there they were pumping music into the underground IT dungeon. It was whiny love songs and country music, and I really hated it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 04 2019, @07:41PM
Retail is real work, you elitist goon.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 04 2019, @03:44PM (5 children)
the Music is Actually designed To keep people fRom lIngering in the store after eXchanging their hem (hard-earned money) for sugar carrier.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by cykros on Monday March 04 2019, @04:08PM (2 children)
Sugar carrier? Perhaps this is a regional thing. Here, it's much more likely to be a double whatever with skim milk, and MAYBE some artificial sweetener if they've no regard for their health. The sugar junkies go to D&D.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 04 2019, @05:13PM
Dungeons&Dragons was pretty sweet.
(Score: 3, Informative) by FatPhil on Monday March 04 2019, @11:05PM
(page 13 being the 6th sugariest drink)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday March 04 2019, @05:16PM (1 child)
I would assume most people consider it to be caffeine carrier.
Young people won't believe you if you say you used to get Netflix by US Postal Mail.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by J053 on Monday March 04 2019, @09:49PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 04 2019, @04:05PM (3 children)
and yet we all have to endure it.
the important thing in life is however, never step out of character...
once i worked as cleaning dude in a drugstore. the cashiers were instructed to keep asking everyone who came to pay for their thing of they want something more and are sure that they are not missing some painkillers. sounds normal, but they had to put on a big smile to the sick people buying medicine, and with pretended enthusiasm almost yell their mantra.
eventually i got fired, cuz i had a fit of rage over this shit, and asked one of the cashiers to shut the fuck up while i am in the vicinity to do my job...
IS THAT ALL? ARE YOU SURE YOU ARE NOT MISSING SOME ALVEDONS? THANK YOU HAVE ANICE DAY COME AGAIN!!1!!!1!!
IS THAT ALL? ARE YOU SURE YOU ARE NOT MISSING SOME ALVEDONS? THANK YOU HAVE ANICE DAY COME AGAIN!!1!!!1!!
IS THAT ALL? ARE YOU SURE YOU ARE NOT MISSING SOME ALVEDONS? THANK YOU HAVE ANICE DAY COME AGAIN!!1!!!1!!
IS THAT ALL? ARE YOU SURE YOU ARE NOT MISSING SOME ALVEDONS? THANK YOU HAVE ANICE DAY COME AGAIN!!1!!!1!!
IS THAT ALL? ARE YOU SURE YOU ARE NOT MISSING SOME ALVEDONS? THANK YOU HAVE ANICE DAY COME AGAIN!!1!!!1!!
.
.
.
shut the fuck up and let people pay... if they need somthing they come back...
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday March 04 2019, @04:57PM (1 child)
While that kind of thing could get on people's nerves. Perhaps you needed more sleep or a job that doesn't deal with that kind of thing, or anger management courses.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Monday March 04 2019, @05:18PM
Or he simply needed some kind of drug that his employer could have provided.
Young people won't believe you if you say you used to get Netflix by US Postal Mail.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 04 2019, @10:01PM
You are framing a demand as an observation.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by cykros on Monday March 04 2019, @04:06PM (13 children)
The amount of whinging this sounds like after the amount of jobs in retail I've had where either the over the air radio or a Sirius XM station was used just speaks to the snowflake syndrome the up and coming generation exhibits. They've always had a repetitive rotation, day in and day out, and nobody questioned it; did you expect your boss to maintain a whole spindle of audio CD's to mix things up? Is is a bit annoying? Absolutely. But you're at work. You're PAID to deal with things that are a bit annoying. And at the end of the day, I'd say if there's a real workers' rights issue going on, it's having to deal with Starbucks customers, not the music. But if this is the kind of employee they have these days, it sounds like they're perfect for each other.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday March 04 2019, @06:06PM (9 children)
Wow, somebody modded this "troll" just for expressing a less popular opinion? Yeah, I generally frown on the "snowflake" rhetoric too, but in this case it seems a little deserved. This is an article where employees are repeatedly comparing canned music in a workplace to Guantanamo-style torture. Yes, read that again. They're comparing having to listen to a Hamilton playlist repeatedly periodically over a couple weeks with being in a dark room with headphones on full blast playing a single song for DAYS on end, without stop. The latter is what torture is. If we were being reasonable, the article should be modded "flamebait" for that.
Canned music on repeat has been standard in workplaces for generations. Employers often do it even outside of situations with customers because there are numerous studies showing the appropriate music can increase worker efficiency. Is it annoying? Yeah, I think so. I'd guess many people here think so -- because this site attracts personality types that are non-conformist. But you put most people in silent situations, and they start to get nervous or anxious sometimes. You want to have a conversation at a cafe, but everything's quiet around you? You start to get paranoid -- you whisper. And malls don't pipe in music for no reason -- again, numerous studies show that MOST people shop differently (and generally spend more money) with piped music.
I'm not arguing in favor of this stuff. I'm just agreeing with the parent that this is commonplace in many workplaces, for all sorts of reasons. I'll agree with the Starbucks workers that having a single very circumscribed collection of music (like Hamilton) on repeat every hour could be a bit more annoying than the typical workplace. But the receptionist in the dentist's office has likely been listening the to muzak equivalent of that for generations. For Starbucks employees to come out and compare this to actual torture situations is a bit over-the-top, and I think it's reasonable to wonder whether it's something generational or about the culture of the employees at a place like Starbucks that is leading to such hyperbolic comparisons.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday March 04 2019, @06:35PM
I'm shocked! Just SHOCKED! How can you think such a thing? ROFLMAO!!
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 04 2019, @07:56PM (2 children)
It's not simply a less popular opinion, it's needlessly dismissive and unresponsive to the actual situation. Yes, canned music has been around since forever, but if KISM played the exact same playlist every day, they'd be out of business in eight of them.
Not really generational, except in as much as millenials are getting the shortest end of shitsticks that any generation in living memory has gotten, and were raised to think that it was normal (rather than commonplace). Bosses aren't used to kids fighting for fair working conditions, and maybe you aren't either?
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Monday March 04 2019, @10:07PM
His point was that it's over-the-top to compare actual torture to repetitive store music. Like how a person isn't an actual Hitlerian figure because he or she disagrees with you on some comparatively minor topic. It's an extension of godwin. That's not a troll.
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Tuesday March 05 2019, @04:01AM
I beg to disagree.
Many years ago I worked in a small IT business - basically the boss and me in a single room. He had a particular radio station that was his favourite, so guess what? We always listened to that station.
It wouldn't have helped that I didn't like any of their music anyway, but the playlist became excruciatingly obvious in a few short days. The same effing songs every single day for months on end. Worse, the playlist started to repeat during the day, so you'd usually get at least 2-3 plays of higher rotation items. Playlist changes would offer a brief respite for a few days until the 'new' song sank in and it would be back to praying for death. And this is something that members of the public were voluntarily switching on to listen to!
One day, while the boss was out, I called the station and asked to be put through to the DJ. After being told that the DJ was uncontactable until the end of their shift, I challenged the person on the other end to play any song at all that had not been played every day for the past 2 weeks straight. They were sympathetic to my situation, but also explained that their research showed that, for every 7 times a song is played on the station, most listeners only remember hearing it once. Without saying it directly, she also heavily implied that listeners were morons. In any case, they would not deviate from the playlist under any circumstances.
8 days to go out of business? That radio station is still spewing its bile 20 years later.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by PartTimeZombie on Monday March 04 2019, @08:47PM
I'm not sure the comment is troll-worthy, but it certainly expresses the view that workers should just suck it up and accept any conditions the boss forces on them, and I disagree with that view quite strongly.
Why should the staff at Starbucks have to endure endless repeats of awful show tunes just because some PHB at head office says they should?
I think they're well within their rights to turn it off.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday March 04 2019, @09:08PM (2 children)
OTOH, U.S. forces used this tactic [wikipedia.org] in Panama against Noriega so it literally IS an offensive military tactic.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Monday March 04 2019, @10:15PM (1 child)
Except it's not.
The poster above was making a godwin analogy -- actual torture looks starkly different than a repetitive merely annoying playlist.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday March 05 2019, @08:57AM
Interestingly, some of the most diabolical tortures involve a merely annoying stimulus applied relentlessly. After all, a drop of water hitting your forehead is merely annoying. A few times can be funny.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 04 2019, @09:28PM
Speaking of hyperbole, tone down your own eh?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 04 2019, @06:53PM
You don't need to suffer from idiotism when you are trying to do your job. Listening to some crap music is not what the workers are being paid for.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday March 05 2019, @12:52AM
“If you don’t put your other shoe back on I will have to ask you to leave.”
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(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...
(Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 04 2019, @04:12PM (5 children)
I replaced the shitty elevator music cassette with Twisted Sister... Corporate got mad when they called and were put on hold.
(Score: 5, Touché) by looorg on Monday March 04 2019, @04:41PM (1 child)
So they didn't want to take it anymore?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 04 2019, @07:43PM
On the day when a branch office was being closed down and everyone was getting exit interviews...one of the techies put on cassette of Johnny Paycheck, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gj2iGAifSNI [youtube.com]
Since the small crew from corporate wasn't familiar with the office space, they didn't have a clue how to turn it off.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Monday March 04 2019, @06:29PM (1 child)
Your "shitty elevator music cassette" had one big advantage: it was licensed for public performance. Corporate would have rightly feared a copyright infringement lawsuit from Dee Snider's music publisher over your having performed Twisted Sister's copyrighted music through a transmission to the public. Consider that Snider withdrew permission to play "We're Not Gonna Take It" [blabbermouth.net] from a candidate in the 2016 US presidential election once the candidate took a turn toward social conservatism. Even for a piece as uncontroversial as Maurice Ravel's "Boléro", playing it over a U.S. line prior to January 1, 2024, would probably anger Ravel's estate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 04 2019, @07:49PM
Technically yes. But the infringement might go on for a long time and be heard by many, many people before the rights-holders would do anything. One of these claims happened here (many years ago) with a bar playing broadcast radio instead of going through Muzak or other copyright-paying music supplier. It had been going on for 6 months or a year before the initial warning letters started.
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Monday March 04 2019, @11:21PM
My father once did similar as a senior in Catholic school with some friends, except they replaced the annual Christmas Assembly record in favor of Simon & Garfunkel's 7 O'Clock News/Silent Night. Their school's administration was not amused (though the auditorium full of teenagers sure as hell was).
(Score: 3, Informative) by Tokolosh on Monday March 04 2019, @04:44PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pipedown_(campaign) [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by looorg on Monday March 04 2019, @04:44PM (2 children)
I have not really noticed this, probably since there isn't a Starbucks in town and even if it wasn't I would never pay several bucks for a coffee in a paper cup. That said I have wondered how all the retail people deal with it during x-mas when they pipe like jingle-bells and other santa songs on a loop around the clock. That has somewhat always felt a bit like torture, it sure if for me and I don't have to be in the store for more then a few minutes. Perhaps it's the xmas torture sessions that have desensitized them, it might be like some kind of SERE-training lite.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 04 2019, @05:02PM (1 child)
For SERE-training they use banjo music.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 04 2019, @06:33PM
Bagpipes.
You know why bagpipers are always walking around when they play? They're trying to get away from the music!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bradley13 on Monday March 04 2019, @04:53PM (3 children)
In a whisky bar I used to help run, we had Scottish music playing. Music has the role of providing (a) background noise and (b) atmosphere.
a) The background noise is needed when the place is basically empty - when you first open, for example. The first customers into an otherwise empty locale often feel intimidated, like the whole world is listening to them. Providing some sort of background sound helps them feel more comfortable. We had our music at a level that you could hardly hear, once several tables were chatting away.
b) The music helps set the atmosphere. For us, it was Scottish. A C&W bar will play country-western, a trendy place will play top-40. This is almost subliminal, but important.
All that said, playing the same songs too many times gets really, really, really old. In our place, I had maybe 1000 tracks on random play, and it still got old for the staff. Some place that just plays top-40 again and again - I can see why the staff would take a shotgun to the speakers. But then, I'm not the target audience for a trendy place, so the music driving me away is part of the intended effect.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Monday March 04 2019, @04:59PM
> a trendy place will play top-40
Sorry, top-40 is not trendy...
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday March 04 2019, @05:13PM (1 child)
Depending on the sound track, it wouldn't take but a couple of repeats for insanity to occur. When you find yourself having fits of rage over that kind thing, it's likely not due to the music. Much more likely, you're under a lot of stress, and / or need more sleep. What does get really old, really fast, is a song on repeat, or a handful of songs on repeat. Rather than having a playlist set on random, I would say a long playlist, set on repeat, would be much better. That way you could "curate the collection"/design it/whatever DJs do, and it would be "fresh again" once it came back around to that first song. 1000 songs, times 3 minutes average, is 3000 minutes of songs, divided by 60 minutes, leaves you with 50 hours of continuous music. I think something like that would be fairly sufficient to provide reasonably fresh music for the staff, if you're going for a specific atmosphere. I doubt most people go through that many songs in a week. Most people have their own playlists, and listen to them on repeat. Though, perhaps that's the old way, what with likes of Spotify, etc.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by nobu_the_bard on Monday March 04 2019, @06:37PM
For people who develop hearing loss later in life, the continuous nonstop ringing sound (tinnitus) is often a source of more stress than anything else. In extreme cases it leads to suicidal thoughts, but in general, it typically causes various problems associated with stress. Usually the best solution is counseling.
Probably, this applies to any sufficiently relentless sound. A playlist with 1000 songs, when you are there only 8 hours a day, I would suspect just takes longer to grate on the nerves because it takes longer to observe the pattern.
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Monday March 04 2019, @07:07PM
It took me years to stop hating Motown after working at one place. There was a guy who played it on the radio, and the station was not DJ'd, it was just a playlist with a lot of repetition.
At least the commercials changed... sometimes.
You can almost set your clock to some of these stations, but if it's a tape they play all the time then that's another notch. There was this Mexican place that did that, and you'd see them put one of several tapes in. They had one called "Fiesta Mix", and I used to imagine the servers counting down their shifts with it.
Misery.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 04 2019, @08:45PM (1 child)
til: musak [wikipedia.org] is still a thing [wikipedia.org]. i guess intermediation works in mysterious ways?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by urza9814 on Tuesday March 05 2019, @01:56PM
Spend some time reading up on Muzak and compare to what's discussed in TFA.
Muzak was literally designed to avoid these problems. Long chunks of purpose-made unobtrusive background music, designed to fit the cadence of work throughout the day, designed to have breaks specifically to avoid "listener fatigue"...they *studied* this stuff and they knew what they were doing.
Compare that to lazily grabbing a few tracks of Hamilton or whatever the latest meme is and cranking the volume up to 11...anyone who put even ten seconds of thought into that would realize it's gonna drive people nuts.
Muzak was designed for the workers; modern background music is often designed for advertisers.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Monday March 04 2019, @09:27PM
Abusing the monitor, tower, speakers ... it's not their fault, they're doing a great job. Just:
So many other choices.