Stop Playing Music Everywhere
I’ve mentioned in the past that not too long ago I used to work at a restaurant.
One day I walk in at 10am to open for lunch and our sound system wasn’t on. For the morning this was normal, the manager on duty would turn on the music after our pre-shift meeting. However, this time we were told that the sound system had stopped working the night before and wouldn’t be fixed until later in the day - or whenever the repairman decided to show up. We once had an A/C repairman cancel on us for several days in a row. That was not a fun week of shifts.
So we open doors without music playing. At first it took some getting used to, especially since we had all come to associate music with the restaurant opening. It felt odd, as if we hadn’t actually begun working just yet. In retrospect, it’s the same feeling I had in 2020 when I was attending college lectures from my apartment bedroom, or when I was working from home. There was no stark “I am now AT WORK” marker or line. It’s strange how that works, because when the music was playing I hardly ever noticed it through the din of the restaurant and having other conversations. I guess it helped that I heard the same 30 songs a hundred times a day every day.
The silence was good. It was pleasant. It was relaxing. Just hearing the creak of the floorboards, the clinking of glasses, plates being set on the table or the clatter of placing them in the dish cart. Conversations were held at a regular volume, or perhaps slightly quieter, which was a very welcome change. I’m not a huge fan of nightclubs in part due to the outrageous volume one must speak at in order to be heard. The exact opposite was a nice change of pace.
Working without the incessant noise of music in the background just made the whole day go by faster, and was far more enjoyable. Individual moments went by almost slower but the whole day zoomed by. I can’t really explain why that’s the case, but I know I vastly preferred it to the status quo.
There was one day I was working a double shift, both lunch and dinner, and I had some time off the clock to get food before I had to clock back in. I grabbed something quick, got a coffee from next door, and decided to go sit outside at a nearby park. What immediately struck me was a public sound system playing Top 40’s hits. Why? Who asked for this? The issue with playing music out in public like this is that if you pick anything interesting then it will only appeal to a small set of people. So whoever picks the songs has to cater to as many people as possible. Thus, Top 40. Enough people genuinely like it, and not enough people hate it so strongly as to formally complain. Does it actually enhance the the public experience though?
Similarly, there’s another restaurant across the street from where I worked that also played music. The only difference was that they would play music outside 24/7. It never turned off. I would leave my bussing shifts at 2:30 or 3:00am and their outside music would still be playing, even though they closed at 11pm. I would walk past the storefront at 9:00am and lo and behold, outdoor music playing. I don’t recall it ever being very good music either.
During this time I got into atmospheric instrumental music that was much softer and easier to digest. I’d walk two blocks in silence to my car after a night shift and would turn this on just to relax during my drive home and drown out the club music I’d been hearing all night.
Fast forward to working an office job. Even still there is no escaping the music. There’s a small TV in my office that some of my coworkers like to put on Pandora’s Country Station for background noise. I happen to sit closest to the TV and cannot stand Country music. After some time Pandora will pause and ask if anyone is still listening. I would never turn it back on. One of the other ladies I work with would come over and say “Oh, did it turn off?” and I would feign surprise.
On days where they didn’t come into the office, I would never turn it on and just work in silence for the day. Those are some of my favorite days. I imagine most people would agree with me when I say I find it much easier to read, write, and concentrate on work when I don’t have someone’s voice loudly pumped directly into my ears (instrumental music is great, in contrast). After a while, we began changing the type of music we listened to on the TV. I still vastly prefer to not have the music playing at all but I will compromise with music that isn’t Country.
At home I found myself filling silence with audio incessantly, playing music or podcasts that I didn’t even really want to listen to nor could I tell you what I had just heard. I realized that I was defaulting to needing background noise - at it’s worst it felt almost gluttonous to have full days of non-stop noise with no silence. Going on an “audio diet” was a great decision, albeit an unconcscious one. I found myself to be far more relaxed in general once I stopped filling every possible minute of my waking hours with some kind of sound.
Restaurants, parks, streets, and all public spaces are not meant to fill our ears with noise, they are to enhance our quality of life. The greater the public noise level is, the lower quality the human interaction will be. Let’s not demand that all spaces must be constantly drowned with the small noises of (usually bad, sometimes benign) music. Natural noises are plenty filling enough.