Stop the Music

It occurs to me that people who listen to others' music all day can get "burned out", and not want to hear any music. Setting aside the argument that the canned music you get in stores invariably shows poor taste, I think it is safe to say that no one wants to listen to someone else's choice of music all day, every day. Retailers who play music in their stores may be able to do a couple of things to get a little more milage out of their employees.

First, if they play Christmas music towards the end of the year, they might want to consider playing instrumentals. I've noticed that some retailers refrain from playing actual Christmas carols for fear of being religiously insensitive. Of course that doesn't stop them from playing other Christmas music...but that's another post. Retailers can safely play those traditional Christmas carols as instrumentals. It expands the rather limited number of songs that can be played during that particular time of year, but nobody has to hear horrible words like "Jesus", "Lord", and "angel". And "the". Well, maybe not that last, but you get the picture.

The second thing retailers should do is turn the music off sometimes. The fact is, some of the biggest retailers in the U.S. don't play any music at all. Ever. Whatever the studies (and I'm sure there are tons of studies) say, the lack of music blaring overhead throughout retail outlets hasn't hurt Target. Even if they decide to can the piped in music for only a month out of the year (the month of January seems appropriate), retailers would give their beleaguered employees a much needed respite from listening to someone else's music. And customers, if they notice anything, might just be grateful too.