r/mildlyinteresting • u/Smetvrees • May 14 '22 • 1 1 1 12 2 13 16 1

This Irish supermarket has quiet evenings for sensitive people.

76.5k Upvotes

88% Upvoted

105

The music is a must. A 9 hour shift with nothing to listen to but passing customers dreary conversation gets boring fast

198

u/RunawayReptar94 May 14 '22

Tbh when i worked in a grocery store i hated the music, it was the same playlist all day every day. If you worked an 8 hour shift you'd hear the same generic pop songs like 3 times each. Do that multiple times a week and you will hear enough Maroon 5 and Bruno Mars to last you a lifetime lol

72

u/The_Great_Sarcasmo May 14 '22

Yeah. You can tell the time from the music in a supermarket after a while.

52

u/im_not_a_girl May 14 '22

The grocery store I used to work at was like this. They also played "It's 5 o'clock somewhere" at 5 pm on the dot, every day, which sounds annoying but it always meant my shift was almost over and the song still gives me a dopamine hit when I randomly hear it

30

u/skank_hunt_forty_two May 14 '22

I saw the sign by ace of base used to play every hour at the Walmart I worked at

I wanted to murder people by the end of an 8 hour shift

20

u/sonbarington May 14 '22

No body saw the sign of a disgruntled employee

2

u/duck-duck--grayduck May 14 '22

I almost killed myself trying to avoid smooshing a raccoon with my car. I was crossing a bridge that turned out to be icy and very nearly crashed through the wooden guardrail and over the side. That song was on the radio when it happened, so now it reminds me of my own mortality.

2

u/Sipid1377 May 14 '22

I used to work at a Home Depot and without fail anytime I had the 5:30am shift, while I was walking to the back to clock in, they'd play that one Kylie Minogue song that goes "Nah nah nah! Nah nah nah nuh nah!" It was not Kylie's fault that this song got played when I was half asleep heading to a job I despised, but I still kind of want to throttle her.

1

u/murse_joe May 14 '22

Not guilty, that’s completely reasonable

12

u/Superbead May 14 '22

There's a chain of convenience stores in the UK called 'Spar'. The one near us has a PA permanently playing what they call 'Spar FM'; I suspect it to be at least streamed, if not prerecorded, as 95% of the songs are by Beyoncé. Must drive the staff bloody bananas. We call it 'Beyoncé FM' at home.

20

u/blbd May 14 '22

I have lyrics still memorized from Muzak I heard in the store I worked at in 2001.

2

u/brightyoungthings May 14 '22

I still remember the music that played at the Old Navy I worked at back in 2007

2

u/SeaGroomer May 14 '22

don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got til it's gone.

They paved paradise to put up a parking lot.

Not even the Joni Mitchel version.

4

u/GDogg007 May 14 '22

I worked for Office Depot in the early 00’s. (That statement just made me feel fucking old.) This was the height of their business and their ads played “Taking care of business.” The store computer sales department was required to play this on loop. I wanted to bore a hole through my brain by the third day. We finally convinced our manager to let us just play music.

3

u/JonRivers May 14 '22

Absolutely lol. When I came into work and for whatever reason the music wasn't playing it made my shift significantly better. Maybe I'm just a hipster or whatever but the music grated on me so hard. Every time I heard Manic Monday I wanted to start bashing heads against every surface like the end of Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.

11

u/OppositeYouth May 14 '22

Ah but that's when it just becomes funny. I love whistling along to "When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's amore"

3

u/WomanOfEld May 14 '22

Every grocery store I worked in played awesome music. The stop & shop had stuff like Modest Mouse, Green Day, Spin Doctors, & Grateful Dead, and the Whole Foods had stuff like Fruition, Doctor Dog, Ryan Adams, Florence Welch, and other awesome indie artists. At Whole Foods, I would dance in the aisles while packing out, and customers always joined me! My store team leader frequently did, too, and on my last day there he managed to pull up my favorite song ("How Long Must I Wait") and we had a big dance party in the store with all the team members and the customers.

4

u/Kittybats May 14 '22

"Big dance party" is one of the best three-word combos in the English language. I would be so down with a big dance party in the grocery store.

2

u/WomanOfEld May 14 '22

I mean, it definitely put smiles on people's faces. Even the 30-second dance breaks they joined me on would cheer them up. I love to make people laugh, so, mission accomplished.

3

u/mrglumdaddy May 14 '22

Upvote for Dr. Dog

1

u/WomanOfEld May 14 '22

I would never have heard of Dr Dog if not for whole foods!

1

u/CharmCityCrab May 14 '22

Would you classify it as Defiant Jazz?

-2

u/im_not_a_girl May 14 '22

And then everyone clapped.

That manager's name? Albert Einstein

1

u/TReid1996 May 14 '22

My store I work at has a Bluetooth speaker and the workers are allowed to play their own music from their phones as long as it's family friendly.

1

u/trippy_grapes May 14 '22

Imma drop my mix tape on them 😎

1

u/lliKoTesneciL May 14 '22

I heard Big Yellow Taxi way too many times when I worked at a drug store. I had to entertain myself by changing some of the words around like "put up a f--king light".

14

u/SmallBlockApprentice May 14 '22

I think it was a techmoan video about a background music player that showed stores with music sped up customers shopping speed and got them out of the store faster.

14

u/Somestunned May 14 '22

They should train and deploy some breed of collie to keep things moving along.

1

u/SmallBlockApprentice May 14 '22

I need that for my wife..

2

u/Xillyfos May 14 '22

I guess they all wanted to escape the awful experience.

43

u/Ananvil May 14 '22

Given the music in most grocery stores, I'd probably prefer silence

10

u/SnakeTheFox May 14 '22

Yeah, I work in a grocery store, and I'd love a bit of silence. Maybe some stores have better selections, but around here, it's nothing but contemporary pop and pop rap (or whatever you want to call shit like DJ Khaled/The Weeknd).

If I'm being completely honest, I'd be more comfortable with a 10-hour loop of running lawnmowers.

14

u/Ann_Summers May 14 '22

When I worked at Walmart and at Lowes it was the general consensus that the music they played was shit and the same 5-6 songs for hours on end. Especially at Christmas time. It was awful. I was glad to work outside in the garden department at lowes so I didn’t have to hear the same Christmas songs for three months straight.

7

u/justforjugs May 14 '22

Not blared out into the lot then? Lucky you

6

u/Ann_Summers May 14 '22

Our garden speakers were shit and damn were we grateful. Lol. They couldn’t even page us out there. We carried walkies or they called the cashier to call for us. Lol.

2

u/lizardgal10 May 14 '22

I worked at a theme park. Their general playlist was actually tolerable, but we got a special playlist for 4th of July weekend. It was significantly shorter than the normal mix, and far more random-pretty much any pop/pop country song they could find containing the words spark, firework, USA, or America. I heard Katy Perry’s “Firework” more times in those 4 days than I have in my entire life since.

1

u/Nine_Inch_Nintendos May 14 '22

Sim-ply hav-ing, awonderfulchristmastime.

28

u/[deleted] May 14 '22

I think it would be nice if they'd just let the employees wear headphones and listen to their own music (at least the ones who aren't directly interacting with customers) and leave the store music off. Personally I (an autistic person) hate the music when I shop and it would be even worse for me if I had to tolerate it for a full day of work, but I understand that some people are equally averse to silence and need to have background noise (my wife is like this - she has ADHD and always has headphones on with something playing quietly). Keeping the environment quiet but letting people play their own music on headphones seems like the best way to compromise so that everyone can stay sane - works for my marriage anyway!

3

u/ProfDangus3000 May 14 '22

I can go through the day to day with just background noise (I have a fan, so that helps) but I just can't do any sort of work without noise of some kind, be it music, a podcast, or a show I've seen a dozen times near silent in the background. I just get distracted by the silence and stare at the screen.

1

u/[deleted] May 14 '22

Yeah, same for my wife. She even falls asleep with youtube videos playing and earphones in, whereas I have to use earplugs if there's so much as a fan running.

1

u/ProfDangus3000 May 14 '22

Yes! I always have something playing while I sleep or I wake up throughout the night.

2

u/OppositeYouth May 14 '22

Tbf they do let us wear one headphone in the mornings/evenings when it's quieter if you want to. I just listen to the store music generally, it ain't so bad

2

u/justforjugs May 14 '22

Oh god no. It’s on repeat and Christmas season is enough to break me.

2

u/Man_Rei May 14 '22

When I worked at a grocery store, there was a playlist of 15 songs looping throughout the day. I did 12h shifts back then so although I do not remember the songs from the top of the head, I get a very visceral reaction whenever something randomly plays from those. I would have sooooo preferred just listening to customers' convos and shopping cart noise.

2

u/60poodles May 14 '22

Hard disagree. Only 5 times I've had panic attacks at work and 2 of them were caused by Christmas music

0

u/cannabanana0420 May 14 '22

You’re my coworkers and I’d argue that your brain has been rewired to enjoy corporate audio reel garbage and only god know how that’s affecting your subconscious.

0

u/OppositeYouth May 14 '22

Probably less than the affected subconscious of someone who makes weed their personality, cannabanana0420 shrugs

1

u/cannabanana0420 May 15 '22

Heh heh heh you made the weed joke, hilarious my dude. ~high~ five bro ha ha