Who would have thought electricity was essential?! *sighs*

[Monterey Jack]

I about wanted to scream every time an SC was like, "WHY IT SO QUIET IN HERE?! What happened to your MUSIC?!"

The hell? I'd LOVE to work/shop in a store with no incessant, annoying muzak playing constantly. I find it exceptionally difficult to read while music is playing, and it doesn't help that my store has had the same music playlist since roughly 2004.

[Dentarthurdent]

I about wanted to scream every time an SC was like, "WHY IT SO QUIET IN HERE?! What happened to your MUSIC?!" in annoying sing-songy voice.

I know that feel. We have something people are very insistent about in our lobby that's been broken for over a year and for a while it had a big sign on it, and surprisingly, people actually read it and it cut down on the stupid questions, but someone removed it, presumably during an inspection that may someday lead to repair, and now the dumb "WHY ISN'T THIS WORKING" questions have started right back up.

As far as power outages and people being dumb about food...I had people practically crawling down my throat during the two power outages we had in <national park> back in February. They couldn't handle the idea that they couldn't get a hot burger for something like 100 miles in any direction. To which I mostly felt like saying "I'm sorry you didn't plan ahead and, you know, bring road food". Not that I've never planned to eat when I got somewhere, but just because all we can serve is cold food doesn't mean we did it on purpose to fuck with you.

[DGoddessChardonnay]

The hell? I'd LOVE to work/shop in a store with no incessant, annoying muzak playing constantly. I find it exceptionally difficult to read while music is playing, and it doesn't help that my store has had the same music playlist since roughly 2004.

Same here. Sadly, it's even worse in the back room where I check in the vendor deliveries - our Musak is turned up loud and everything echoes terribly.

If I could get away with it, I'd bring in one of those pod speakers to set my iPhone in, turn off that detested Musak and jam away while I'm working to some Junior Walker and the All Stars or Donna Summer.

[Trixie]

As much as my coworkers and I complain about the music our store is just way too quiet without it. Especially when the store is empty. It's actually kind of creepy. A few years ago they redid our store and the two front wall are now all windows and they must've tripled the amount of lights. We've had a few partial power outages and it wasn't too dark since it was during the day. Actually it was better for me since the glare on the monitors was gone.

[Shalom]

I think I've posted here before about how we lost power in one Aid of Rite. We evacuated the store, shut down the computers before the UPSen ran out, and called Coprorate for further instructions. They said to take flashlights from stock and go face the store in the dark.

Yeah, right. We instead took beach chairs from stock and waited for the power to come back on, until the Mets game started and I went outside to sit and listen in the car. It never did come back on that day.

, turn off that detested Musak and jam away while I'm working to some Junior Walker and the All Stars or Donna Summer.

I actually have done that on occasion.

Christmas, I think it was about 2000 or 2001, Aid of Rite, the store was only open from something like 10 to 2. There were a total of three employees in the store: me, Jewish, and the ASM and a stocker, both Muslim. Not a Christian in the lot of us, so I shut off the universally-detested Christmas muzak and put on some Chanukah music...

I also used to play my own mix CDs at the Pharmacy Named After Two Streets In Downtown Manhattan, rather than the supplied ones (we didn't have satellite muzak in that store for the first few months I worked there). Store was in an African-American neighborhood (around the corner from Bill Clinton's new office) so I figured a classic R&B/disco mix would be more appropriate. (Playlists on request. CD#1 went from 1949 to 1992 and everything in between, but mostly 60s and 70s.) One of the cashiers asked me for a set of them, so I burned her four CD-Rs. Next week she came by and asked me if I could burn her another set. I asked her, what happened to the first set? She said she played them for her mother, who glommed onto them and wouldn't give 'em back. She said, "My mother asked me, 'Your pharmacist burned these? Is he Black?' I said 'No, Mama, he's a white Jew.' She says 'What, and he listens to this music?!' "

On a more sober note, on 9/11/01, when I first heard from customers what was going on across the river, I hacked into the PA system and fed WINS (the all-news station) in. Left it there until about 6 in the afternoon, by which time they were starting to repeat themselves. I still haven't seen the footage of the buildings coming down, and I don't want to: hearing it happen on the radio was bad enough.

[Tama]

How did you NOT see the footage? They were playing it daily for weeks and MONTHS later!

I'm just extremely curious...I really do mean that it was everywhere...

[wolfie]

One of the cashiers asked me for a set of them, so I burned her four CD-Rs. Next week she came by and asked me if I could burn her another set. I asked her, what happened to the first set? She said she played them for her mother, who glommed onto them and wouldn't give 'em back. She said, "My mother asked me, 'Your pharmacist burned these? Is he Black?' I said 'No, Mama, he's a white Jew.' She says 'What, and he listens to this music?!' "

That's a change from the normal case of someone's mother confiscating the media containing their music.

On a more sober note, on 9/11/01, when I first heard from customers what was going on across the river, I hacked into the PA system and fed WINS (the all-news station) in.

Bit of trivia regarding an incident a few years earlier than that. One news announcer at a radio station in Lakehurst NJ convinced management at the radio station to let him do a live report from the scene of the arrival of the first airship of the season. He got more of a story than he bargained for - the airship in question was the Hindenburg.

[Jester]

I am so glad we don't have Muzak at The Bar. We have satellite radio, and while I don't always like the channels various managers put on, a lot of time it is good classic rock. And when I'm busy and moving and grooving at Mach 3 to serve customers, I love it when high energy rock is there to keep me moving, like some Gimme Shelter here or some Thunderstruck there. Fun times!

[Tama]

Wow, lucky radio announcer...

[Shalom]

How did you NOT see the footage? They were playing it daily for weeks and MONTHS later!

I'm just extremely curious...I really do mean that it was everywhere...

I don't have a television.

I did see some shots of the buildings on fire; someone at the front of the store had a small (like 5") B&W TV, and although over-the-air TV wasn't working due to the transmitting antenna being on the roof of 1WTC, one of the stations (WABC-7, if I remember correctly) had commandeered the facilities of a spanish-language station in Jersey on channel 47. But I was back in the pharmacy department when the collapse occurred, and didn't see it. I've been actively avoiding seeing it since. Not having a working TV helps in that regard. I'm sure I could find it on youtube if I really wanted to, but I'd rather not.

[Tama]

Yeah, you really don't. It's depressing as hell.

They played the footage of the towers falling, of the smoking wreckage....you could fill a week with all the news on it.

[AccountingDrone]

How did you NOT see the footage? They were playing it daily for weeks and MONTHS later!

I'm just extremely curious...I really do mean that it was everywhere...

By avoiding the news <shrug> more or less the same way I managed to avoid all the recaps though I did watch them come down live [I used to spend my early mornings watching news to keep up with it. That cured me of it. ]

I can also say I have never seen more than a few seconds of Titanic, Moulin Rouge, Avatar, Twilight [any of them], Hunger Games [any of them] and a few other movies.

Anything that they try to pound into my head makes me seriously resist ever watching them in my entire life. I will turn the TV off if I need to avoid crap like that. For a while all I watched was movies with no commericals and stuff from Netflix.

[wolfie]

Yeah, you really don't. It's depressing as hell.

They played the footage of the towers falling, of the smoking wreckage....you could fill a week with all the news on it.

One Christmas I got "This is what happened in your birth year" booklets (mail order) for a friend's family. One of his kids was born in 2001. Wound up re-ordering (B&W version the second time) because from the colour version you couldn't tell that the year had another 364 days.

[Chromatix]

Anything that they try to pound into my head makes me seriously resist ever watching them in my entire life.

I'm the same way with Top 40 music - the dreck that gets played incessantly on most radio stations.