People growing up nowadays probably don’t realize how much louder the world has become. Radios and televisions blare everywhere, at least in all chain stores. And in many restaurants. It’s even reached the medical profession.
In the examination room of a doctor in Charlestown, when the doctor asked for my medical history, I had trouble hearing her above the music being pumped in. She interpreted my request to turn off the music as my having a hearing problem. All I wanted was to hear her voice without having to filter it from the Bam-Bam-Bam noise. I never returned.
Many dental waiting rooms now have televisions playing. If I’m going to wait for half an hour or more, no way do I want a television yammering at me. It took a while but I found a dentist without a television. And she understands that when I’m in the dental chair, the music gets turned off.
Back in my laundromat days, I used to enjoy lugging my clothing with a book or magazine to read while the machines did their job. Then one day the laundromats started sprouting televisions. Even though no employees were there. I could no longer read while I waited. So I’d look around for new laundromats, until they too installed televisions.
I had to settle for a laundromat with a loud television, but one unfrequented enough that I could stand on a chair and turn it (or at least the volume) off.
The loudest store I encountered was a Radio Shack. I heard the Ka-Thump Ka-Thump from 20 yards away. When I opened the door the noise quintupled and nearly knocked me over. There were no customers. Just one worker, about 20 years old or so. I was afraid to enter.
I had to scream as loud as I could just to be heard. “If you turn down the music, I promise to buy something!!! I know just what I need!!!”
He shook his head no.
I’m not sure if he was choosing to keep the volume super-loud, or if he was merely unauthorized to adjust the sound system. I didn’t stick around for an explanation. I fled and took my business elsewhere. When Radio Shack went bankrupt, I didn’t mourn.
Restaurants now pump music throughout their dining areas. I don’t wish to raise my voice to be heard. Nor do I enjoy filtering out the words of my fellow diners from the electronic aural assaults. One or two local restaurants remain mostly quiet, and those are the only ones I choose to patronize.
I no longer enjoy going to weddings and other celebrations with assigned seating. It means sometimes getting stuck next to a loudspeaker. Which means you have to become a loud speaker to be heard over the loudspeaker. Let’s safeguard our hearing. Keep the musicians but eliminate the amplifiers.
I’ve donated more than five gallons of blood over the years, a pint at a time. Was just trying to do my civic duty. But that was all in my younger days. Then – about 1990 or so – the blood workers started bringing in their boom boxes and blaring them. Which made giving blood an unpleasant experience for me. I didn’t mind the needles. But the loud music made me stop donating.
Why, I even used to donate platelets – a process called apheresis, where both arms have needles in them for nearly 60 minutes while all the blood in you travels from one arm to a machine that siphons out platelets, and then the blood is returned to you via the other arm. Then one day, a television entered the hospital’s apheresis room. So while I was helpless with both arms hooked up, I was forced to listen to a showing of the movie Charlie’s Angels. I kept moving my head to escape it. This concerned an attendant. I asked if they could shut off or lower the television. She said she’d be happy to change the channel, but not the volume.
I never returned.
Earlier this month at a chain pharmacy, while waiting in line, I clapped my hands over my ears as tight as I could. It was the only way to lessen the aural assault. I kicked myself for having left my ear plugs in the car. The music being amplified through the store kept pounding me. There was no way to duck. Worst of all, I was required to stand in a spot right where the speaker was aiming.
Sometimes I can handle the music. Not that day, though.
When the pharmacist beckoned, I sidled up, hands still over my ears. She nodded knowingly.
“You don’t like the music?” she asked, with kindness.
“Even if I liked the music, the volume would still be painfully loud to me.”
She nodded in commiseration. “We don’t like it either.”
“Are you allowed to turn it off?”
She shook her head sadly.
Non-chain stores are allowed to turn down or turn off the music. But a store that is part of a chain, whether owned privately or owned by the mega-corporation, must abide by strict rules, ranging from store layout to merchandise stocked to advertising to in-store music.
Growing up, we often rode in elevators. The music played in them was played softly, and without lyrics, though many of us knew the songs quite well.
If stores have to play music – and I don’t see why they need to at all – then why not soothing elevator music?
Instead of Ka-Thoom, Ka-Thoom, Ka-Boom!!!
Arthur Vidro is one of the Eagle Times’ recurring financial columnists. His “EQMM Goes to College” appeared in the May/June 2021 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.
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