Break

[Think Blue]

In our break room we have tv and it also has cable. Most workers go watch some tv during their breaks, and sometimes there is more than one person in the room watching tv, so the practical thing to do would be to put somthing on that most everyone would agree to watch (ie news,popular tv show).

However our employees are not that smart. Everyday we hear screaming and arguing coming from the break room stuff like "hey wtf I was watching that you
bi*ch" or the more popular "change the channel you sob".

It has gotten so bad that the boss is considering take away the tv if they can't play nice. Things took a turn for the worse last thursday when our employees decided to activate the v chip locks on the tv.

Since one of our employees likes to watch nothing, but MTV hits (gangster chris) it was locked as well as anything over pg. On Sunday My boss and I had to go into work because of some paperwork that we thought had been filed was nowhere to be found.

When we decided to take a break, we turned on the tv to watch some sports, but what do you think we were greeted with? Thats right the black please enter pin screen.

We were so mad that someone actually thought they had the authority to do so. I still cant believe it . So lets hear your epic power struggles for the tv or radio.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Good God, this is about the millionth time I've told this story....

Years ago, when I was mostly a truck unloader, one of my coworkers was very religious. In fact, he was going to school to become a minister or preacher of some sort. We had a radio in the backroom that we listened to as we were unloading trucks, and most of the time it was on the hard rock station. So this meant we were listening to a lot of songs which had obscenities in them, but they were edited out by the radio station.

Well religious co-worker didn't like the music we were listening to, so he asked one of the supervisors if we could keep the radio off or at least change the station to christian music. The supervisor told him to go take a flying leap.

Religious co-worker probably then went to management and said the Three Magic Words ("hostile work environment"), because the managers then took away our radio and told us we were never allowed to have one again.

Think Blue, too bad your co-workers have to be fighting over the TV. At least you have cable TV to fight over. We only have an old TV with rabbit ears in our break room, and we only get 2 or 3 stations that come in decent.

[Brighid45]

Yeah, our breakroom tv is the same way--broken rabbit ears that only get in a couple of channels. But we can all live with that since we don't watch it anyway. It's the radio situation that's out of hand. I posted about this on the last board, and things haven't changed.

We have a radio on the main production floor, and a smaller radio in the back where I work. By 10 a.m. both radios are being cranked up to drown each other out. This is already a VERY noisy workplace, with two production circles in use, various 3-speed exhaust fans, forklifts and pallet jacks in almost constant use, a commercial-size washer running, dozens of cases of glass bottles being dumped out and set up for filling, etc. To have two radios blasting at ear-splitting volume makes it all a lot worse.

Some of us have spoken to our production manager about this, but since he's infatuated with the (married) woman who keeps perpetuating the war by racking up the main radio, we're all SOL. *sigh* I said it before and I'll say it again: those radios just might take a midnight dip at the local quarry.

[AFpheonix]

We have a table, 4 hard plastic chairs, and a lot of overstock in our breakroom.
The microwave has smelled funny ever since the people who did inventory burned the bajeezus out of some popcorn in it.

I eat my lunch in my car, and techs tend to not take our 15 minute breaks at all in our store. If we do have some downtime, we tend to just hang out in the back of the pharmacy and have fun with each other.

[chainedbarista]

that reminds me of the clinic that i ran when i was active duty; we had a tv in the waiting area that had cable set up, so we could watch or listen to shows/music during the day.

i'd often bring tasks up to the front counter to work on, so i could keep an eye on the front, finish tasks and watch a little tv.

my asshat supervisor accused me of 'just watching tv and not working,' as i was preparing a surgical pack in front of his eyes...then told me i couldn't have it on during the day on non clinic days.

before this, i told him if the tv was such a problem, i'd have morale and welfare dept. cancel the cable description, so it wouldn't be an issue any more. he suddenly looked panicked; 'oh no,' he says, 'you can keep it, you just can't WATCH it.'

a few days later, i find out they have tv upstairs because they'd pirated off of our cable downstairs. this asshat was afraid he wouldn't be able to watch the superbowl in a few weeks. bercause super bowl sunday was coming up (for us, it was monday, since we were a day ahead) and lo and behold, these *bleeps* in the upstairs office were wanting to watch the tv during work hours.

wtf? it's ok for you, a member of the military, to steal a cable signal, then watch it as you see fit, then tell me i can't watch it, even though it was purchased for us, during work hours? damned hypocrite; one of the many reasons i hated working for him, outside of him being a total idiot, a lousy sup and having no real purpose there to begin with.

[powerboy]

At my old job, we were first able to have radios, so nothing bad happened, until one day, one of the bosses took them away. I can actully understand him on that, what with being safe and all. They told me I would be working on this one saw, which was outside, and the bosses would hardly ever come by. I asked one supervisor, if I could have a radio, that way, I could get my work done faster, they aggreed. Then all hell broke lose, one of the fork lift operators, saw that I had a radio, and bitched about it non-stop. and then after it got taken away, the main supervisor of my dept, brought me another one, and told the other bosses, that I needed on, so that I would not go outta my mind.

[Moirae]

We have two tv's in our break room. There aren't any arguments. Usually both tv's are showing something different. Occasionally, one will show sports and the other will be on a comedy that everyone can agree with (like Everybody Loves Raymond).

Every once in a while, something will be on that you don't like but there are enough people watching it that you, as a single person, don't have the right to ask them to change it.

I've never heard an argument over it.

[Tejas]

we have 2 TV's in our break room, but the TV's are specifily for monotring whats going on the various sound stages, as they like us on set as promptly as possible. one Tv is set to the first unit and the other set to the second unit. i don't even think we can get other stations on them

i brought an ipod the other day for music on set, as i listen to alot of praise and worship and christian music and i don't want to force my music (and therefore my beliefs) on others

[wagegoth]

Graveyard Shift

Years ago, I worked graveyard at a law firm. (No, law life is nothing like on TV.) All the attorneys had radioes in their offices.

I kept a boombox with me in the word processing department. At 3:00 a.m., on a slow night, it can be the only thing keeping you moving. Also, I found that playing songs that I knew all the words to sped up my typing considerably.

One night, about 2:00 a.m., I'm rocking out to Green Day, when this new associate walks in. I immediately turn down the box and help him with his work.

Next day, we get a memo saying that word processing can no longer have music in the department. I promptly thought, "Bite me," and continued playing my music. No first-year (lowest of the low) associate is going to get my music tossed. That night, I mentioned what had happened to one of the senior partners. He asked for the associate's name.

We never received any more complaints about the music.

[protege]

Having my tunes was one of the few things that kept me sane at camp. My boss always said that as long as it wasn't "offensive" (i.e., no gangsta crap), he didn't care what I played. Trust me, being able to blast Bohemian Rhapsody while doing inventory was freaking awesome.