Ravenwood - 12/05/03 06:15 AM
Labor unions in Austria have unsuccessfully pushed to ban Christmas music. Now they are resorting to begging retailers for mercy.
An Austrian trade union has claimed the repetitive playing of Christmas Carols in department stores is nothing short of "psycho-terrorism" for salespeople.With no legal way to stop companies from playing repetitive Christmas music, Rieser is pleading with company owners to cut back. If they refuse, the terrorists will have won.From morning to night, for weeks before Christmas, there was the same Christmas music in department stores over and over again, said Gottfried Rieser of the Union of Private Employees.
"Many staff in the retail sector suffer psychologically from it. They get aggressions and aversions against Christmas music. On Christmas Eve with their families, they can't stand Silent Night or Jingle Bells any more," he said.
I completly understand these guys...I worked in a Home Depot one Christmass season. 8 hours of holiday music is enough to drive anyone nuts; the problem though is that it is typically only a 30 min. sequence.
"Gee Mark...when ya takin a break?"
"I donno...probably after the next version of 'Sleigh Ride.' but before the jazz version of 'Rudolph.'"
Posted by: MMW at December 5, 2003 8:42 AMIt's not just Christmas music that can make you nuts if you work in the store. Had a manager once who had like 2 CDs which were great music until around the tenth time in a row! Actually, in that store Christmas was an improvement since I think he had about 5 CDs of Christmas music and that was only for one month, not 11 months!
Posted by: Carol Andrus at December 6, 2003 2:11 PM(c) Ravenwood and Associates, 1990 - 2014
