Hello again, readers. Now that the weather has returned to more normal temperatures after a few days of dismal rain, I can move on and complain about something else — not that I hadn't started doing so already. My complaints this week may make me seem like I am a 95−year−old grandma, not a 20−year−old college student, but I'm sure there's at least one other person on this campus who feels the same way I do about loud music in clothing stores.
Yes, you read right. Loud music in clothing stores. Loud music in any store, really, is enough to get to me after only a few minutes. When I'm getting ready to go shopping for a new pair of pants, I don't generally hope to be rendered deaf as part of the package. It seems like most stores these days are out to do just that — although I'll admit, it was much worse when I was a teenager. Stores directed at pre−teen and teen customers tend to blast the music and spray the cologne more liberally than any other sector of the market. I have a theory that they just wash all the clothes with cologne or perfume rather than detergent; you, readers, can form your own opinion on that matter.
But I digress. Even though most of the stores I shop in nowadays play their music at an acceptable "background" level, there are always the odd few that play it so loud I can barely think. I believe this is supposed to be some kind of marketing scheme — they play music so loudly that you don't really pay as much attention to the clothes you're trying on, and thus you end up buying more than you had originally intended to. It's sort of like how they use a certain type of lighting, and tilt the mirror at a barely discernable angle so that you look better in the store mirrors than you do in the mirror at your house. Ever notice that? Yeah, you're not alone.
All things considered, though, loud music generally just makes me want to exit a store as quickly as humanly possible. Usually, I don't end up buying anything. My mom is even worse — hi, Mom! Of all the times I've gone shopping with her, the most difficult were certainly during my high school years when every store I wanted to shop in was blasting loud music. My mom doesn't just turn around and leave the store though. She gets angry. The anger slowly escalates until it's almost palpable in the air surrounding her. Usually, she tries to have a conversation with the cashier about the music, but that conversation never gets far because the cashier can't hear her. Nowadays, she just doesn't come into a store if it's going to be loud. I used to just shrug off her reaction and act all embarrassed — what can I say? We've all been annoying and 15 years old at some point. Nowadays, I admire and respect her mission to silence — or at least to dull — the music pouring out of department store speakers at excessively loud volumes.
Depending on the mood I'm in on any given day, or any given shopping trip, I may even harass the cashier myself. One of the times I brought myself to do this, the cashier thanked me for voicing my concerns. She had been listening to the same loud music, on a loop, since she had arrived at work hours earlier that day.
And that's when I knew for certain that I didn't want to work in retail.
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Kaycey Rayder is a junior majoring in English. She can be reached at Kacey.Rayder@tufts.edu.
