The Office Music Sucks

Alright, there is one thing that I hate in corporate America’s tech world. The tech room music. I have to deal with the worst music ever. I’ve never been in an office environment where I didn’t have to put on headphones for my 8 hour shift, because of the stupid music that is played at obscene levels. I’m not sure if my coworkers genuinely love the music they play, or if they are trying to test the levels at which frustration will amount via musical tonality, but it is horrendous.

I’ll give you two different portraits of office life, the way I have experienced it.

NPR, Talk Radio, Opinions – I have to deal with opinions all day long. I work with elitists who argue about every little instance of their being. No one ever agrees and no one ever backs down. I’ve seen fist fights ensue over what motherboard you have. It sucks, and it’s stupid, but it happens. I have been in too many offices that love talk radio or NPR. They love to hear people talking and will beat you up if you change the station. It’s really stupid, and I was even fired once because I changed the radio station from NPR to something else. I’ve recently started to listen to a podcast that I liked and introduced it to my coworkers, who own the radio, and they started to like it. But all of a sudden, they didn’t like it and now don’t even give me the time of day at the radio. Sometimes they’ll ask politely if I want the radio, but they cringe when I play some hardcore, metal, or even some hip hop that I enjoy. It sucks that I have to tolerate their ambient, club mixes, and random obscure records, but when I put something in that isn’t in their top ten, I get the immediate knock out, and they start putting on headphones. Talk radio sucks, I hate to hear the same mouth breathers trying to fill space and time, and most of the time I want to strangle the people on NPR for lacking enthusiasm. It’s stupid. I don’t want to hear talk radio, and am glad I got canned for not liking NPR.

Club, Ambient, Hip Hop, Dj’s – I unfortunately get to work with people in my office that are die hard hip hop fans. They love beats, dj’s, remixes, mixes in general and you can’t tell them any different. You try playing a rock album and they will own you in a moments notice. Most of the time I have to sit through the same remixes by the same dj’s or live records from some obscure band or artist, and if I say anything, they just argue that I don’t know anything about music. It’s hard to argue with them, but then I drop the fact that I used to own a record label and actually have written fro many of the magazines that they read, and then they shut up. But I still can’t take over the sound, they won’t allow me any access to the radio, it’s stupid. I have to feel the bass beats jump off my headphones, and then they try to talk to me and of course I ignore them, and all is well.

Those are just two major examples of what I have to deal with on a daily basis.

Of course, I could wear headphones the rest of my career, and I'm not 100 percent opposed to that, but I don't want to sacrifice my hearing for the sake of annoying music. Plus, I'm over ruled here, there are two votes to my one vote. I also am supposedly a higher rank than them, so I have to take one for the team on a daily basis, and listen to their stupid music. It's stupid, I just wish they would give me my own office so that I could work in silence, away from these sounds that no one likes, except for the elitists that I work around. I don't know if I would mind as much if they worked hard...but that's for another place and time.

I'm serious though, my office has the worst music. In fact, the only place I've ever been into (two places really) has been to Zumiez (A mall skate/snow/surf shop) and Hot Topic. Those two places aren't annoying to me musically. But they don't pay me the wage I get paid here, so maybe that's the trade off.

It's a good thing I am not a doctor, lawyer, or some other office clerk. That musical environment would kill me.