I could put this in the Minor Complaints thread, because that's kind of what it is, but I thought it might be worth a thread of its own...The music policy in Spar changed a few months ago. Whereas it used to be some crappy Dublin radio station, which was fine, it's now playlists of Muzak type stuff. It seems to be divided up into genres, at different times, and all of it is objectionable. I often go in there and don't notice for the first five minutes, but as soon as I do, it's a race to the check-out and a deep breath of air as soon as I get out. I normally go in to Spar tired and a bit stressy, and somehow the knowledge that someone in head office in Spar thought it would be a good idea to treat me and their other customers like this drives me a bit mad...my ear starts analysing just what the producer was going for with each song, like Grunge, or electro, or American rock, or happy bubblegum pop or whatever. I listen closely to the flat horrible tunes, and the frankly deranged lyrics and it quickly becomes the opposite of background music. There's something a little brutal and obtrusive about it, both in its intent and its effect.
And I can't quite understand why ALL of it is so bad...surely once in a while one of the writers would accidentally string three interesting chords together over a nice groove, with a hooky lyric...but no...
I had a similar thing once in Lidl a few years ago, where the Ryanair colours and the fact that the signs had all been hung at exactly the height where my head would hit all of them combined with a rare hangover, and I had to go. But this is more of an ongoing (minor) battle.
I think it must be a combination of price and the usual mood-manipulation of Muzak that makes it useful for Spar, but it can't be easy for the workers, and it's pretty grim for at least one customer.
And I can't quite understand why ALL of it is so bad...surely once in a while one of the writers would accidentally string three interesting chords together over a nice groove, with a hooky lyric...but no...
I had a similar thing once in Lidl a few years ago, where the Ryanair colours and the fact that the signs had all been hung at exactly the height where my head would hit all of them combined with a rare hangover, and I had to go. But this is more of an ongoing (minor) battle.
I think it must be a combination of price and the usual mood-manipulation of Muzak that makes it useful for Spar, but it can't be easy for the workers, and it's pretty grim for at least one customer.
no, but there are times when I come home from work and don't want to traipse across town for the Lidl one. So. Can we just accept that there are times when one might occasionally - for perfectly valid reasons - find oneself stuck in a Spar for long enough to notice that the music in there is particularly terrible? I mean, you could easily get caught in a queue for more than five minutes in there.
