Day 22 Thursday 13, work style

Okay, you buggers.  I got one for ya….you know I hate these damn things.  Yeah, yeah, I brought this on myself, I KNOW.

BTW….did you see I’ve got 69 HEADS over there!  Oh the naughty things I could say about you all.  Wouldn’t it be fun if I could turn half the heads upside down?  Just every other row….  I’m naughty like that.

Alright, so its been all about work this week.  Since I’ve been reading some fun blogs lately that talk about music and the meaning music has had in their lives, I thought I’d talk about music in the work place.  Yes, its a stretch but thats how I like to do things….random, barely connected threads of thoughts, that is how this bitch rolls!

1.  To call this first one work related is might seem far fetched but hey, I got paid so thats a job, right?
When I was a sophomore (I think?) I would babysit for this fairly well to do guy and his first wife.  Weird thing is while they did have a CD player (hi-falutin in those days!), they only had one CD:  soundtrack from Top Gun.  I watched those kids almost every Friday night and had NOTHING else to listen to (b/c come on, nothing good is on TV on Fridays, at least not back then and I sure as hell couldn’t figure out how to turn on the damn radio!  I’m not exactly an audiophile)
On that same theme, I would Grandma sit for a family friend: bad money that one and NO TV!  Nothing good to read in that house either.  Only thing I could find was a cassette tape of Lionel Richie, Can’t Slow Down…best known hit: Hello.  Can’t hear that song w/out thinking about those tediously long hours in the afternoon w/ the sleepy granny.

2.  Next up was my job at Sonic.  This is where I first encountered the tradition of a closing song.  Most of the time it was Hotel California.  I can smell the onion rings and feel my skin getting greasy after 2 bars of that damn song.

3.  As if ONE fast food restaurant wasn’t good enough, I signed up for more exquisite torture at Wendy’s.  When working w/ the too full of himself, Mr. K, we’d close up shop with whatever Too Short tape the guy had with him.  Really expanded my vocabulary at that gig!

4.  On to the athletic training job.  Usually we just had the radio on b/c the boss was too cheap to have a nice stereo or b/c he thought it would get stolen, which was a safe bet.  I’ll never forget the idiot Athletic Director thinking Eric Clapton Tears in Heaven was by a Christian artist about a Christian topic.  SHEESH.  Listen to the lyrics dude!

5.  Lifeguarding was one of my favorite jobs.  We didn’t often have music playing during the day b/c we had to be able to hear kids crying out (if our eyes failed us.)  But the evening parties, there were few rules.  So we blasted the jams.  My absolute LEAST favorite song of all time was super popular during that time and we danced to it on the high dive:  the Macarena!  Oh god, don’t make me do that dance!

6. Okay, I can see I’m going to need to cheat a little here….I don’t think I’ve had 13 jobs and besides, its all about the music, right?  Okay, so back to work, this time at the bar.  One of my favorite albums came out during this time and since we weren’t a big town, the access to really good music was tight.  I just happened to be visiting the big city, heard this artist and rushed to a CD store and bought it and took it to work.  It was an instant hit and I would scream the lyrics while dancing on the bar top:  Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill…THE WHOLE ALBUM!  Love it still!

7.  Another hit that was popular at the time and one that we played WAY TOO MUCH was Beck’s Loser.  Still fun, and I like it more now than I did then.

8.  Finally, the bar owner had a tradition of a closing song: Roger Miller’s King of the Road.  I can’t hear that song without thinking of that boss.

9.  Oh wait, there was the nights the boss wasn’t in the bar at close so of course we had to suffer through Semisonic’s Closing time.  If that wasn’t the most cliched bar song of all time!

10.  About this same time, I did a stint at mental hospital.  I primarily worked with the adolescents.  If we had free time on the unit, the kids were allowed to have the radio on.  The song that sticks in my head from that time was Smashing Pumpkins’ Bullet with Butterfly wings.

11.  One day, while on the job, listening to the radio, there was a call in contest to tickets to a show at a very small venue downtown.  The kids encouraged me to call and WOO HOO!  I won!  Got to see another favorite artist: Tracy Bonham.  Her hit Mother Mother I believe is also a favorite of JenJen.  (Had to keep up the week’s trend of linking other bloggers, you know.)

12. Several years later and a few jobs without any significant musical influences or genres (ugh the pop days at  Lucky was just painful!) found me working at a call center. (The one w/ the pompous, suit wearing boss.)  We had to listen to KOIT, “Lite Rock, less talk.”  That shit SUCKED!  The hippest song this station ever played would have been an instrumental version of some early 90′s U2 song,   Please don’t ever make me listen to that dentist’s office music again!

FINALLY, At work today, I get to listen whatever I want on Pandora (a LIFE saver!) but if I wanted to really make points with the boss, I could just play our hold music: the entire catalogue of the Beatles.  Not bad, not bad.

Does your work have piped in music or is there a song that takes you back to the days at a job you loved or hated?

13 Responses to Day 22 Thursday 13, work style
  1. Americanising Desi
    April 22, 2010 | 7:48 am

    ok until i hadnt read this i hadnt given it a thought!

    i think i should now!

    Reel Wisdom

  2. CountryDew
    April 22, 2010 | 7:54 am

    I have worked from home for the last 15+ years and so have spent a lot of time listening to Jagged Little Pill and most of Melissa Etheridge and Sheryl Crow's albums.

  3. MommaKiss
    April 22, 2010 | 9:31 am

    we have no piped in music. But that Closing Time – one of my favorite songs ever (because I was AT the bar as a patron at closing time. Problems).

    I love pandora at work. And celtic christmas. Yes, even in April. It's my happy place, so don't you judge.

  4. I am Harriet
    April 22, 2010 | 10:44 am

    Funny. I don't want to remember some of my former jobs.

    Have a great Thursday!
    http://harrietandfriends.com/2010/04/are-you-doing-anything-special-for-earth-day/

  5. i beati
    April 22, 2010 | 11:30 am

    King of the Road that's interesting.

  6. Coffeypot
    April 22, 2010 | 11:38 am

    Shoot! Songs remind me of first dates, memorial dates, race cars, being at sea in the Navy, driving alone at night with the windows down and grooving to the tunes. Now it's Talk Radio.

  7. Florida Dom
    April 22, 2010 | 12:38 pm

    Enjoyed the post but we don't have piped in music.

    FD

  8. Red Shoes
    April 22, 2010 | 3:19 pm

    I tend to think about the sound tracks of our lives…

    CRANK HER UP!!!!

    :o D

    ~shoes~

  9. Jessica
    April 22, 2010 | 4:52 pm

    The lead surgeon always gets to pick the music in the OR; sometimes it can lead to some pretty fun sing-a-longs.

  10. Ally
    April 22, 2010 | 11:43 pm

    That is still one of my fave Beck songs ever!

    FourthGradeNothing.com

  11. Christiejolu
    April 23, 2010 | 1:41 pm

    At the preschool where I work we have a nap time CD. One of the songs disturbed me when I first started working there. It is called "Sleeping with the fishes" Now growing up in NY this was not a good saying. It meant you were in the Hudson river with a pair of cement shoes. LOL! But now after 5 years I find myself singing that darn song all day after nap.

    Another music memory at work is blasting Killing in the Name of by Rage after we closed the gates at a retail store. Weird that that song now reminds me of Christmas! LOL!

  12. MommaKiss
    April 26, 2010 | 10:13 am

    Oh Mad Woman…

    come out come out wherever you arrrrrrre.

  13. Alicia
    April 26, 2010 | 5:28 pm

    Hey! I'm so glad I saw your post on my blog, my little boy will be 22 monts when the new one arrives, around the same age as yours I think! I am so glad I found your blog!

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