I've worked in some swanky places, and some not-so-swanky places. The building I currently work in -- 11 Penn Plaza -- was built in 1923 and the lobby is actually pretty grand, in an old-school elegant way. So I was a little worried that with the onset of the Christmas Season, the people in charge of such things would decorate our lobby with holiday festoonery leaning toward the tackier, stupider end of the spectrum. The first morning I arrived to see the decorations in place, I was pleasantly surprised to see that they were all extremely tasteful and appropriately elegant for the architecture in question. A truly lovely first rate job, to make even the scroogiest cynic feel the joy of the season during that brief moment actually spent in the lobby, between one's commute through the cold and the bleak, and one's stressed-out office environment. I found myself actually envying the security guards stationed in the lobby all day.
Until...
They added the sound-system.
Playing the Christmas music.
Now... there's obviously a spectrum of Christmas music out there, with lovely tasteful Christmas music at one end, and horrible nauseating make-you-want-to-jam- ice-picks-into-your-ears Christmas music at the other.
Guess which end of the spectrum 100% of our lobby music is on.
The otherwise beautiful environment has been destroyed by sonic wallpaper made of turds. Christmas turds, but turds nonetheless.
So now, I speed through the lobby like Indiana Jones running out of that booby-trapped cave, so as not to get hit with any turd laced christmas song arrows shot from the open mouth of Celine Dion's death-head. An opportunity to impart a little aesthetic appreciation, some sanity and calm, replaced by yet one more crass stress-inducer, just because somebody in charge of something has got shit-for-taste in music.
When I'm King of New York, those people will not be allowed near the public iPod.
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