Monday, November 30, 2009

Make it stop

How can you stand it, I asked a grocery store staffer. It annoys me, and I only have to be here for a little while.

He shuddered and told me they started three days before Thanksgiving. It's driving him batty.

How can you stand it, I asked the guy at the register as he bagged my groceries.

He tried to stay focused, he said. He just ignored it the best he could, concentrated on what was in front of him.

You'd think, after establishing strict child labor laws and a five-day workweek, unions would be able to ban all-day Christmas music in supermarkets.

I can sort of understand blasting "White Christmas" at customers in other stores. We're potentially buying presents. Maybe the management figures it can whip us into a spending frenzy by reminding us of when we were kids and anxiously awaited Santa's arrival. Or something.

But supermarkets? People buy food because they need food. It's not a seasonal thing. As far as I know, people don't shop for gifts in the frozen aisle.

I can strategically avoid most retail until December 26. I cannot, however, stop eating.

It's going to be a long month.

4 comments:

wyvernfree said...

My husband brings his Ipod with him when he goes grocery shopping. Maybe you could try that.

I don't really like Christmas music in general, but the ones I really can't stand are the quasi-secular ones about Santa Claus and loot acquisition and/or how happy and hyper-romantic everyone is darn well supposed to be. Those are awful messages (and coincidentally most of those songs come along with crappy music, too.) At least the real Christmas carols have a nice meaning, and usually some musically redemptive features.

Rhodester said...

Oh, I dunno, I once bought my wife a sack full of frozen beets for Christmas. Bing was singing.

cinderkeys said...

Wyvernfree: I'd probably walk into walls if I took my iPod with me. :) But I agree about the relative quality of Christmas songs. The religious ones are usually better. And it's not even my religion.

Rhodester: I wondered why I came home with beets on this outing! Turns out, if you play "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" backward, it says "blessed are the beet eaters."

Billy said...

I'm not a fan of giving close to 1/10th of my annual ear time to what basically amounts to 100 or so songs played over and over by different artists. I have more than 6,000 songs on my iPod, 90% of which I adore, so I'm sure as hell not interested in giving special consideration for that select minority that are about Christmas.

I might could settle for two weeks. Maybe 10 days. But not five, six weeks of it over and over and over...