I have autism, and I lost my seasonal job at Spirit Halloween because the noise from the animatronics is incredibly overstimulating. Posted this in the Spirit Halloween subreddit and was told to just tune it out (I literally can't do that, I have a disability) and that the animatronics are so customers can enjoy them. I really don't give a fuck about customers enjoying them for like 15 minutes when the employees, even if they can tolerate it, are suffering all day for no reason.
I was just fine during set-up days, but I ended up quitting day one because I could not cope with the insane noise. Why are the animatronics so loud, and why can't we turn them off? Two of ours were broken and repeated their lines on an endless loop even when no one was walking by- one was Ghostface, so all three of his lines ended in a woman screaming, and the other was that goddamn marionette POS that I have a vendetta against. The most obnoxious child's voice ever repeating the same four lines CONSTANTLY. The Terrifier animatronic wasn't broken, but the loud horn honking going off frequently was still horrible.
They were all loud enough that no matter where I went in the store, I could hear them. I have autism and the overstimulation triggered a complete meltdown- I ended up crying in the fetal position trying to tune the noise out. Even if you don't have sensory issues, how does anyone tolerate this? Why do the animatronics need to be turned on? Do customers not understand that hearing something deliberately designed to be upsetting EVERY SECOND OF THE WORK DAY, NON-STOP, is a nightmare?
We're not even allowed to turn off the broken animatronics. Why do employees have to listen to them? No one likes it. Customers can't be enjoying it either. I don't understand how anybody puts up with this and why we're expected to when we could just turn off the fucking animatronics. If a customer just absolutely needs to see it work, we could turn them on for a minute. I felt like I was going crazy- there's no reason for the store to be a fucking torture chamber.