As someone who works in retail presently, you cannot underestimate the detrimental effects of a poor musical selection on the overhead speakers, especially when youâre trapped listening to the same album four or five times in the course of a shift. There were actually times I went to the manager and asked them to change the disc to anythingâanything, I tell you!âother than the Frozen soundtrack.
I could never work in retail just for this reason. Why do they have to play the absolute worst music available?
Way back in the day (1982, I think) there was a station in NYC that played âlove songs, nothing but love songsâ. It was fucking horrible. Of course this was the station the restaurant I was working in chose to have on. Every time I was working, when no one was looking, Iâd turn the volume to zero. That helped.
âWe considered a living wage⊠HAHAHA not really, fuck these people, less than dogs anyway the governmentâs problem., hahah. mmmmhmmm, but seriously, we turn down the Bieber and Celine, theyâll call us heroes, and besides, if we need to adjust some employees, we turn it up again, then turn it down again and weâre back to being caring management types. Itâs fucking great. Meanwhile we can market the fact of having DJâs in-store, itâll have the same positive effect as having Mickey-D in-store. Also, our customers donât care what our employees look like (I mean, look at our customers, thereâs even a website glorifying the worst of the lot) and itâs getting to where they canât afford to wear what we tell them, so fuck it, let them wear what they want. Then we can fire them anytime at all for not looking neat enough or something too. Motivating employees is win-win baby!â
âBieber and Celine soundtrackâ constitutes cruel and unusual punishment!
âLet the fools have their tartar sauce!â
Iâve heard the radio station in Asda (the UK Walmart subsidiary) play âLove Will Tear Us Apartâ, âBoys Donât Cryâ, and âThe Beaten Generationâ. Nice for nostalgic fortysomethings (like me) maybe, but odd choices for increasing customer spending or worker motivation.
Iâm rather sick of music being unavoidably everywhere, so: Thank you!
I donât know if itâs just my local CVS, but itâs usually good stuff. Heck, the other day I heard G Love and Special Sauce â not your usual national chain pharmacy fare.
Itâs not, you know, enough money to live on or health insurance, but as far as working conditions go, these are nice improvements.
When I worked in retail, we had the tape loop music track and there were certain songs that just grated hearing them 4, 5 times in a shift. I assume Radio Walmart is not a DJ in each store but one team of DJâs programming for all of Walmart and this being streamed to all the stores.
Relaxing the dress code is nice, too, because if you live in jeans then you are having to buy extra clothes for work. I remember when I waitressed they had all these requirements for certain types of shirts and pants to wear, which all came out of my pocket - it was a big deal when I was making so little that I couldnât buy the required clothing.
2 words - Christmas Music
Now Iâm very thankful that my terrible retail work experience in college did not include a soundtrack.
Not an option everywhere in the US, but if you must shop at a chain âdiscountâ retailer, but donât want terrible music forced into your earholes, Target is the store for you.
Probably mentioned this before, but I had a summer job in 1998 where they piped in Heart FM.
Heart FM had (has?) the worst playlist ever. Ever day, for weeks on end, you could guarantee to hear both of these several times. And they were shit the first time. 17 years later and I still hate them.
At least one person tried to rebel, because the radio would occasionally change to Classic FM for a couple of minutes before getting turned back.
Silence would have been so much better.
Or wear your own headphones with your own music. Does quite wonders for me, when shopping in such stores.
If America would just stop shopping at walmart, it would cease to exist.
Edit: is there a reason the headline and URL say âwamartâ?
Is there any word about buying American products again and motivating all American workers at the same time?
I really dislike that people do this. Youâre far less likely to be paying enough attention to the other people around you to not be incredibly rude.
Welcome to our world. Welcome to our world. Welcome to our world of toys. Welcome to our world. Welcome to our world. Welcome to our world of toys!! Repeat until Cthulhu is summoned.
I had a good friend who worked in a retail shop that sold menâs jeans. They played the local Top 40 Country station. It would cycle through the same 40 songs endlessly. The cherry on top was Saturday when they would have the TOP 40 COUNTDOWN. This consisted of playing those same songs in order of chart sales. That all sounds like death of a thousand cuts to me, but notably better listening than what Walmart has got going on here.
