In my line of work I am constantly interrupted which means that using headphones is a waste of time since I spend half the day pulling them out of my ears and saying what?. I’m also someone who can’t live without music, so I’ve had to resort to listening to music on unpowered speakers quietly at my desk. Unfortunately for the people around me that has also turned me in to an unofficial dj. Thankfully they don’t care that I listen to music but it does mean that everyone becomes a critic. Since the ipod is mostly on a random playlist I’m never sure what will come out of the speakers so when Xanadu or Debbie Gibson starts playing I know I’m going to get shit for it. Not that it stops me from putting them on in the first place – everyone has uncool music they love. But after a week of particularly harsh ribbing (why didn’t they like my suicide songs playlist?) I decided to turn the tables and designated everyone a day for their own ipod.
Cheryl the scottish lass (or subtle whoer as we like to call her (not a spelling mistake, that’s how she pronounces whore)) was first up and she chose to regal us with the Proclaimers as her “get the party started” selection. After that, the scottish anthem and the pogues (is there a theme here?) she began to realise there is a lot of pressure in the selection of music. No one is going to be happy and everyone will have a comment. Today it was Michael’s turn and he didn’t really want to hand over the ipod. He claimed it was gym music, we wouldn’t like it and he would bring in a different playlist tomorrow. We said he wasn’t allowed to prepare and we will take what comes. After listening to it for a while, I started typing faster, blue lights started flashing and dodgy men started hanging around trying to offer us drugs. Since work is now about to implement drug tests, none of us took up the offer and we decided that dodgy men with neon makeup on just don’t work in an office environment.
From this small experiment I’ve decided that I’m happy with my ipod and I’ll probably not implement this idea again in the future. 😉 I’ve now also understood why radio stations have to play a new song once every hour. People don’t naturally like to hear new music so you have to slip one song quietly in between old favourites over and over again until they think it is familiar and notice it. It’s a tough world this music business.