I work at a grocery store behind the deli counter. All day, non-stop, it’s Taylor Swift, Imagine Dragons, Coldplay, Ed Sheeran, and other pop music over the intercom that I personally cannot stand, especially for 8 hours straight. Behind the deli line, when I’m just working on pre-packages or not working directly with a customer, I’ll have one AirPod in to listen to some music that I like and that doesn’t drive me insane. I’ve seen a few other coworkers do the same thing, and nobody says anything about it.
At one point in my shift, I was outside of the deli area and pulling items to the front. I had my AirPod in. Some older employee that I’ve never seen before approaches me and says “Hey, take that out”. I hear him, and take it out. He continues, “It’s against the rules. Don’t do it again”. And he walks away.
To reiterate, I was not working directly with customers, I was tending to items. And I can hear everything around me, I have one ear completely open, so if a customer were to ask me for help, I’d pull out the AirPod and respond to them (as I have before). But for some fucking reason, this corporate square deemed my one AirPod inappropriate. GOD FORBID I do one simple, inoffensive thing to make this repetitive, boring, menial work a little less miserable. GOD FORBID I make the limited time I have on this planet that’s spent in this fucking building feel a little less wasted. But no. It doesn’t matter if the AirPod helps you work and stay focused on the task, and improves morale. If you express a modicum of humanity, it’s “against the rules. Don’t do it again”. FUCK YOU.
Side note. I HATE with a PASSION the corporate world’s insistence on playing the same tired rotation of bland popular music over an intercom 24/7. As a shopper, I find it a minor nuisance but ignorable. As a worker in the same building for the whole day, I find it MADDENING. Why must we devalue music like this? To have it default as “pleasant background noise” and enforce it on anyone who steps foot in the building? I mean I know why. Studies show that people spend more money when music plays in a store. So there it is. Money, greed, gimme gimme more more more. Fuck your ears, fuck your sanity, you’re gonna listen to Maroon 5 for eight hours a day five days a week and you’re gonna LIKE IT.