Luckily I’m normally a cheerful, happy person. Because things that have happened lately could make me cranky for more than an hour and I just do not have time to be cranky that long. Such a waste of a day. What am I going to get by being blue for so long?
People don’t do their work. Why? I don’t understand why someone would choose to be lazy. Now, I’m not talking about every once in awhile, and I can definitely understand when the shit is hitting the fan some things just don’t get done, but consistent poor performance? I don’t understand and really have no time for such lame stuff. For all the grousing I’ve done about my job for the past 8 years (and there has been a LOT), the one thing I can always say is that the people here always feel accountable. Whew man, that goes a long way with me.
Then there are the weird times that you can’t really figure out what you think about them and therefore they are Intriguing.
On Saturday we are deciding where to go to breakfast and there is the usual passive aggressive, I really want to go out from my husband, and mine, I really don’t want to deal with the kids in a public eatery, but we finally decide to go to the Austin Diner, which is a fair trek from our home, but not too far.
We have parking right in front. Awesome.
We walk in and some not well known Van Morrison is playing. Awesome. If there’s anything I love, it’s Van Morisson in the morning, or Creedence Clearwater Revival. It goes back to college and morning sun and wooden porches and comfortable friends and something about the color yellow. It’s warm and I love it.
We sit at a table right by the giant bookshelf of toys at an old 50s chrome table which is wonderfully oversized for all the toys and plates on the table. Another sigh of comfort. I look around and its people I think I relate to, skinny jeans, tattoos, messy, around my age, my peers. Sigh. My neighborhood is lovely and the stream in my backyard is to die for but the people are not these people, though I really think they are probably more similar than I realize, I like being in this crowd.
Then the music switches to Joy Division as they hand me my coffee. Good God what a dream of a morning. The kids are still playing and not fighting so much. Artie and I actually get a chance to talk. The waiter helps us through our bizarre self-imposed diet restrictions we’ve placed on ourselves. I think about the awesome college reunion party I had the night before.
I try to help my son with some cutting and gluing and accidentally knock my coffee over and the music all of a sudden goes from Joy Division to Phil Collins. I say outloud, did we just go from Joy Division to Phil Collins? And the waiter says he’s very frustrated by the music because there is one person who works there that switches it to a local oldies station whenever anybody complains about the music and how he hates that.
And I look around at this crowd and think, what ahole here prefers Phil Collins to Joy Division? Who here complained about Joy Division? This is not the crowd I thought I knew. Someone is an imposter. Artie says they get what they deserve by having Phil Collins be the response to the complaint. ha!
I’m too befuddled by the extreme switch to really have an answer to what you do when people complain about the music at a local eatery. I have my own issues at the cookie store and have had to change the music there, too, which about broke my heart. But of course I still have ideas for the future on how to infiltrate and change it back.
As I really like quotes, let me use one I sort of remember from yesterday from Theodore Geisel who basically said that people who don’t matter bitch and whine, but people who do matter don’t care so do what you like and be who you are. I think that is the lesson from the music in the store issue.
The lesson of my post? None really. At most it’s something like get the hell out of my way unless you are relevant to yourself. I can only say something like that here, ok, I don’t go running around saying that kind of thing, but it’s nice to say it at least once.
Meanwhile, I’m working up a nice napcast for next week. If anybody has any good theme music they’d like to contribute, you know, songs from movies, TV shows, etc., send them to me. If you don’t have my email, let me know.
There are two businesses in Chapel Hill that have my utmost respect when it comes to playing the music they want to play.
The vintage clothing store, Time After Time, has one of the best CD collections of anyone I know, the owner makes every effort to constantly buy new CDs and he’s compiled a very broad collection of excellent quality stuff. The retail person working there gets to play anything they want and they have the owner’s permission to throw anyone who complains out of the store – no soup for you style. I’ve been in there watching college kids shopping and looking at each other in puzzlement and disgust while the Frogs sang “baby greaser george, he had on a leather outfit
oh, three months or so,
but boy could he ever suck”. And I’ve seen more than one person ask for the music to be changed, just to be told politely, no.
The other place is Pepper’s Pizza who used to be a fairly grungy rock and roll pizza place, but now they’ve moved to a fancier location and expanded, and look more like they belong in a mall. However, what distinguishes from any mall store i’ve been to is that they have kept their tradition of letting the cooks play anything they want, as loud as they want. Used to be the music was just a stereo in the kitchen that you could hear outside, but now they have speakers out in the dining area playing whatever the cooks are playing. Last saturday i was there for some pizza around noon with Marina and they were blasting some black metal so loud it was hard to talk without raising your voice. How can one not admire that? There were families with children, college kids, etc there, and no one was gettin up to leave. Well, the music was there when they walked in, so they knew what they were walking into.
At any rate, my advice is to play the music you want. I know that most people will advice you to try to cater to your clients, but i say, once you start down that road, where does it end? phil collins? muzak? i’m convinced people prefer a place that has a personality. Then again i’m not a business owner, so be careful listening to me.
I don’t understand people who go to someone else’s establishment and demand that they change the music.
yeah, I usually ask what they are playing.