So hi, I mostly lurk but I feel like most of us in retail/food service feel this pain. I work at a coffee shop in my town. Super rule heavy, everything has to be specific. In general I don’t mind this as it means all our drinks are the same no matter who makes them, everything remains clean etc. but the stupidest rule by far is we cannot change the radio station. It’s stuck on the coffee shop radio during business hours. Now if it were like an actual radio and played all sorts of songs it would be ok but it plays all the same songs all day everyday. There was one shift I counted hearing Taylor Swifts antihero 7 times, basically once per hour and I already dislike T swift but now I hear the song all the time every days . I have asked to change it several times especially when this one song comes on (it’s a lot of live acoustic versions of popular songs and they all sound terrible) and this guy sounds like Lin Manuel Miranda with a sore throat and I’ve had customers tell me it’s terrible. So customers also have to listen to the garbage and I’ve even had complaints. Sometimes I don’t care and I play the 90s hits radio bc I can stand the music better and it’s not the same song over and over again, but I get yelled at when my bosses find out. I feel like I’m going crazy and ofc I cannot get a reprieve cause I’m here 8 hours a day. I just wish shops wouldn’t be so strict w the music cause as long as it’s appropriate I don’t understand why we can’t have a variety? I used to work in retail and we would have a CD player play store approved songs and that was better cause I was more busy so I blocked out the music more. We are very slow rn as we just opened 6 months ago so I definitely hear it more, cause it’s so quiet in the shop. I feel like we should be able to maybe not choose the music playing exactly but be able to have a variety cause I’m going crazy here having to hear the same crap songs all day everyday.