Utopian 'Office Music Democratizer' Assures Employee Insurrection

Oh please! So somebody prefers Frank Sinatra to Lady Gaga? Where I work, at a busy boatyard, (picture rusty old baymen drinking Schaeffer beer for breakfast), there's sports blaring on the TV in the shop, sports blaring on the radio in the parts area, a lot of cussing, spitting, hacking, farting, occasional Hank William's music and plenty of dirty jokes. Sometimes I'm driven to fits of retching from the disgusting noises I overhear. WHY do I work there? I'm basically my own boss and I get paid plenty to run the place!

Seriously: do you expect the lords of the office to give a plebiscite to wage serfs? In other words, the touchy feely office of the dot-com/real estate boom is dead--it is a rare office indeed that will spend time and money to make employees happy when there are at least ten others ready to snap up the job of the dissatisfied.

I work in a furniture store and my boss hooks his Ipod up to the system running all of the TV's I swear he downloaded all of the worst songs of the 80's and he plays it so loud you can't think...on top of that he walks around singing along most of the day When one of us turns it down, he just walks over and turns it back up even customers have complained and he just says "I gotta have my music" I'm about to "accidentally" loose the Ipod!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I've been unemployed for nearly a year now. If I ever get a job I will deal with anything that goes on in the office. Every little aggravation will be tolerated. I will never, ever do anything to show my displeasure in the office. Always happy. I think that everybody who has a job right now should just let every little thing that irritates you go. Unless you know for sure that complaining won't get you fired.

People are getting so sensative any more. I'm 87 years old and can remember the great dipression. A job was something to cherrish, petty annoyances were to be tolerated. Why ? There was a dozen or so unemployed sitting there waiting for an opening of a job. There was not welfare to depend on for food. It was work or go hungry!

THIS IS A TRUE STORY...YOU WILL LOVE IT! I used to work in an office where we all sat in cubicles. Everyone in my area listened to the same station. Everyone except ONE stubborn, morbidly obese "lady" who insisted on listening to the "oldies" station. The station had their music on prerecorded tape because they played the same songs every day, all in the same order. "Peggy" insisted on listening to her station even though it interfered with the sounds coming out of everybody elses' radio. Something had to be done. Somebody had to put their foot down, and that foot was me!
One morning, I came to the office early and since "Peggy" sat directly across from me, I simply poured a small glass of water down the inside of her offending radio. When "Peggy" arrived to start her day, she turned on her radio like she did every day. She exclaimed out loud, "My radio doesn't work!" I calmly assured her, "maybe it's not plugged in". We checked the plug, and I fiddled with the knobs and antennae. Nothing seemed to solve the problem. I asked her if the radio was old, and she assured me it was, and she had gotten her twenty dollars worth of tunes out of the transistorized monster. "Well, that's too bad! I guess you will just have to listen to the station the rest of us listen to" I told her. She never did purchase a new radio to replace the one that mysteriously "died". We didn't have to listen to "Peggy's" tired, repititious "oldies" anymore. Next time, I will tell you about how I solved the problem of the evil lunch thief!

For people with Central Auditory Processing Disorder ANY noise lessens our ability to focus and concentrate. Ban the frickin' music and other loud noises everywhere. Studies show it causes stress reactions in many even with CAPD. Why are we so childlike that we have to be "soothed" (e.g., irritated) all the time? Are we so afraid of our own thoughts and of peacefulness that we have to fill in the gaps all the time? Geez.

As people age, this becomes more and more of a problem anyway and the baby boomers are aging.

If you have to listen to music all day to occupy your mind, you probably don't have enough to do. Pay more attention to what you're supposed to be doing and you won't even miss the music. Trust me, been there, done that!

i was the operations manager for a huge furniture store and our office/sales people were forever complaining about the 'muzak' (it had about ten options). since these people were always either late or clocking in at the last minute, i finally told them that the first person on the 'floor' could set the channel each day. worked like a charm and everybody was happy.

At my office you have to wear headphones to hear your own music. It's the PEOPLE chattering all around my work area that drives me crazy.