by Erin Smyth

Created on: July 22, 2009   Last Updated: July 23, 2009

For years I thought that listening to music at work would be a definite plus. Sometimes during school classes, ones that required a lot of studying from a book and not a whole lot of listening, certain teachers would let their students, including myself, listen to their walkmans. This was many years before tiny iPods and MP3 Players were born into existence. I always felt that this was a benefit. It helped kids at least to focus on their own papers and work instead of teasing the other weaker kids while the teacher's back was turned.

Going on this belief formed in childhood, I thought that listening to music while at work would be a good experience and help the productivity of workers, making the boss a very happy camper. That was before I started to work at a certain store, one which relied on computers and one where the boss allowed music to be played. I was taught a very valuable lesson on how playing music can swiftly turn into a very distracting and worrisome thing.

My workplace has four computers. The boss works in the back one, which is hooked up to speakers. The ancient computer next to it, the one that I usually work on, also has speakers attached to it. I'm a pretty mild worker and usually just let the boss listen to her own music. That she is the boss probably has a lot to do with this fact too.

The other two computers are in the front of the store. There is one pair of speakers. Whoever has the speakers has the right to listen to whatever music they want to, just like the person with the TV remote is in charge of picking what channel and show to watch. You can see the problems already forming from this. One of my coworkers likes to listen to opera music. The rest of us aren't that big on that type of music. Listening to a certain music genre that you aren't that into can result in some pretty nasty headaches. Another problem is formed by the fact that this coworker likes to sing along with the music. We are forced to listen to a concert given by her on a daily basis.

The fact that she won't allow anyone else to listen to certain tunes has created a musical rift in the office that shouldn't be there and is rather distracting. Another worker tries to play her music or wait for the other worker to politely volunteer that she play some of her own favorite musicians' work but she has waited in vain for a very long time.

This office struggle has led me to believe that, while music is often very soothing and can help the work go quickly, when you are dealing with several different people with very strong differences in musical taste music in the workplace is not always a wise decision.

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