Muzak is the mind killer.

smashinator · Post by **smashinator** » Thu Sep 09, 2004 1:03 pm

My job sucks. I mean, not in the normal, sucky job sort of way, but in the "constant addition of humiliating or demoralizing rules, policies, and tasks" kind of way.

Recently, some art has been posted in all the departments, by mandate of the founder/president of the co. Here's a link to what it is: http://www.byu.edu/moa/exhibits/Current ... 038672.gif

Yes, that really is hanging on our walls. Better, we all had to come up with "motivational" sayings to go under it.

The best one I had was "I wonder if I can trip the bus."

Now, that's pretty bad, and the way the founder parks either in the middle of two spots (covered), or in a handicap spot (there are no handicapped people that work here, at least) is pretty bad.

But the worst thing is the fucking Muzak. Some people can apparently tune it out, but for whatever reason, I can not. So I'm stuck with songs like Summer Breeze in my head, complete with badly added drums and grocery-store-saxophone-crap.

So why don't I bring a radio or headphones? Both are strictly prohibited, and for some reason, most people here like to snitch.

SO! I've been trying to find creative ways to block the muzak/subvert it where I am. My electronics geek friends couldn't come up with any good solutions for me (damn speakers being wired in...), but someone suggested one squirt of spray adhesive per day would gradually quiet and eventually silence the offending speaker.

Any other fun ideas out there?

Post by **DerGolgo** » Thu Sep 09, 2004 1:31 pm

Get a hearing aid. There are models out there with a walkman input. An empty shell might do as well, just put a small walkman earpiece in. If they start asking questions, mumble something about "WHAT? OH! YES! THE DOCTOR SAID SOMETHING ABOUT CONSTANT BACKGROUND NOISE AT THE WRONG FREQUENCY. LIKE MUSIK OR SOMETHING."
And thous shalt never be bothered again.

Ames · Post by **Ames** » Thu Sep 09, 2004 3:09 pm

Damn, sorry dude. First of all, I'm fond of making up obscene lyrics and singing them in lieu of the real ones. "Pair of these, hanging down low, now drop down on your knees and bloooow" for "Summer breeze." It may be kind of juvenile, but then again, so is high school.

My caption for the picture (a real cheer-fest, by the way) "Gaspacho day at the soup kitchen."

Delphia · Post by **Delphia** » Thu Sep 09, 2004 7:47 pm

take a shotgun... come in and shoot out the speakers.

you will be arrested but when your in the police station do nothing but sob "the muzac made me do it" when they get in the shrink keep it up... you will get off on insanity then you can sue your company for the mental anguish and make a fucking packet.

Delphia · Post by **Delphia** » Thu Sep 09, 2004 7:50 pm

as for the muzac.... a serious suggestion would be to go to the person who can change it and tell them sincerely and honestly (as you can manage) that you and some of the other members of staff feel that its actualy counterproductive as after a while it becomes deathly irritating.

If you dont mind the added workload you could offer to come up with a more please everybody type setup. playing stuff thats widely appealing and non offensive but dosent suck badly.

Post by **Beemer Dan** » Thu Sep 09, 2004 7:54 pm

the police and/or meter maids can give tickets for parking in handicapped spaces....even on private lots. Just give em a call. At $50 a pop, it's bound to give your boss as much if headache as the muzak gives you.

You could get rid of the muzak by safer means, but it al depends on how gullible your boss/co-workers are. Describe your workplace and I'm sure the bunch of us will be able to find some suitable subterfuge.

SidVicious · Post by **SidVicious** » Fri Sep 10, 2004 3:28 am

i work in a grocery store and i find a good portion of the muzak to not be that bad.

and sometimes i even sing along - much to the dismay of my co-workers.

summer breeze! makes me feel fine...

happycommuter · Post by **happycommuter** » Fri Sep 10, 2004 6:33 am

Type O Negative did a wonderful cover of the Seals & Croft song.
Would one of those fruity Sharper Image white noise generators cancel the Muzak?

deaconblooz · Post by **deaconblooz** » Fri Sep 10, 2004 7:45 am

The art isn't all that bad...I kind of like it in an Edward Hopper kind of way, but motivational??????? The only motivation I see is to keep kissing ass and toeing the line w/ your keepers so they don't fire your sorry ass and you end up on the curb like that poor schmuck.

We have no music at our office, so everyone's free to bring in radios, cd players or use internet radio off the computer. Most everyone's music is pretty compatable, so there've been no conflicts or fistfights breaking out. The place I used to work at had one guy who, for some godforsaken reason liked Disney soundtracks, so we got stuck listening to Elton John singing lion king drivel...yecccccch.

By the way...Beemer Dan is right... The private property thing is no way to skirt the handicapped parking deal. Your boss will pay!

Deaconblooz

smashinator · Post by **smashinator** » Fri Sep 10, 2004 8:26 am

Regarding the handicapped parking thing, SWEET!

We've already tried the "it's massively distracting" talk. Napoleon upstairs has decided we will have muzak, and WE WILL LIKE IT. It's that, or get a new job. Yes, that's (basically) how it was put (and yes, I'm looking).

My whole department was an afterthought, so we're kind of stuck in storage room B. Meaning that when my boss isn't around, we can get up to all kinds of hijinks without anyone noticing.

Oh god, it's playing "that don't impress me much" right now....

Post by **DerGolgo** » Fri Sep 10, 2004 8:29 am

Another way to get rid of the muzak would be doing it the geek way.
Get a little mike, a speaker and a differential amplifier, also a delay gate. Put the speaker on your desk, between yourself and the muzak speaker. Put the little mike ontop of it, shielding it from your own speaker. Point the mike at the muzak speaker. Hook up the differential amp and the gate and, with a little fiddling, the reversed amplitude soundwaves the differential amp makes out of the muzak will come out of your own speaker correctly timed to neutralise the muzak by our good old friend, Mr. Interference.
It works on cars (Ford developed it), should work on your desk. If you have a desk. Just imagine a magical cone of silence at your workplace. You will be the envy of your colleagues and your boss will admire your inventiveness.

smashinator · Post by **smashinator** » Fri Sep 10, 2004 8:54 am

Hey, I'm all about the geek way of doing things..... That sounds like a project I might have to take on.

Post by **DerGolgo** » Fri Sep 10, 2004 11:33 am

Hmm....do you have a pc at your desk? One with speakers and mike for video conferencing? If so, you could probably knock the whole setup together on a software basis, nobody would notice any odd hardware or speakers on your desk.

smashinator · Post by **smashinator** » Fri Sep 10, 2004 2:14 pm

I have a pc, but no mike or speakers. And I don't know if the sound card is up to recording and playing at the same time... I guess I'll have to look into that. Then I could do that coding while at work and look busy at the same time.

SWEET!

SidVicious · Post by **SidVicious** » Fri Sep 10, 2004 4:22 pm

Cone of silence?!

who are you, Maxwell Smart??

Post by **DerGolgo** » Fri Sep 10, 2004 4:29 pm

SidVicious wrote:Cone of silence?!

who are you, Maxwell Smart??

Damn you, you have uncovered my secret identity!

Post by **DerGolgo** » Fri Sep 10, 2004 4:53 pm

smashinator wrote:I have a pc, but no mike or speakers. And I don't know if the sound card is up to recording and playing at the same time... I guess I'll have to look into that. Then I could do that coding while at work and look busy at the same time.

SWEET!

Hey, if you end up making money out of it.....cut me in, will ya?

smashinator · Post by **smashinator** » Mon Sep 13, 2004 7:15 am

Man, making money from stuff is SO 1990's.

But if I make something from it, I'll be sure to give you a token of my esteem.

rhinoviper · Post by **rhinoviper** » Mon Sep 13, 2004 3:16 pm

You might find this article interesting...http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/A497856

Based on this statement,

In common parlance, muzak is any soft, ostensibly unobtrusive music played in stores, shopping malls, over phone lines, and in public places where people are likely to buy something. In many places, it can go unnoticed entirely, sinking out of aural range amid the general commotion of talking, rustling, and cash register sounds...

(and I don't know what you do, exactly, but) you could argue that there is not enough "general commotion" in your office to warrant the muzak or that, based on enough employee complaints, that the muzak in this case is no longer serving its purpose because it is no longer unobtrusive.

You can do some more research to back your argument and find quotes like

The arguments favoring background music are persuasive and the findings documenting productivity increases are impressive. So why even consider stereo headsets? Because in any organization, a large number of employees will probably resist efforts to introduce background music. Muzak's own research indicates that more than 20 percent of employees prefer no music to background music. Other independent research projects also indicate that many employees find background music annoying and, in some cases, an invasion of their privacy.

(found at http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/ ... i_18298711

Another option would be to poll those who, like you, object to the muzak and see if there is a type of muzak that the majority of you can agree upon. I'm sure most of them would "vote off" Summer Breeze in a heartbeat. So maybe, if you can't win with the boss, then make it a Win/Win (ducks B12's evil smirk) by playing muzak but one that's more tolerable.

*Steps off business-oriented soapbox*

Orthodoxgypsy · Post by **Orthodoxgypsy** » Tue Sep 14, 2004 6:54 am

I think that the interference generator will probably not work unfortunatly, and I'd lay down some cash to say that you won't find a software solution for it. Here's why: If this smashinator fellow/fellowette is working in corporate america that probably mean that he/she is using windows. Windows is not a real-time OS. Meaning there are delays galore. So, by the time it was able to recieve the signal, which would already be delayed from the source by (340m/s) / (number of meters between source and COS(cone of silence)) Win-blows would not have very much time to capture/decode/cancel the signal. If you then add a gate delay thingo like you were talking about, it would seem to me like you'd only have a really fancy ear-splitting shriek machine.

*note* if you do build such ear-splitting shriek machine give it some sort of interesting name like bloodclef or dreadclot and tour it around the country as an avant-guarde noise project. You'd be warmly recieved in providence by the artsy crowd. Now, here's the kicker, when everyone is gathered around the shriek machine during it's first performence, you bust out with a chainsaw and slaughter them as if you were a wolf among lambs!! ha!!

Muppet · Post by **Muppet** » Tue Sep 14, 2004 7:14 am

i suggest getting these posters* and hanging them up around the office http://asia.greetings.yahoo.com/browse/ ... otivators/

xx

*i realize these are the greeting ecard version... i can't get into despair.com right now for some reason.

smashinator · Post by **smashinator** » Tue Sep 14, 2004 7:46 am

Just so we're clear, I am a fellow.

Now that THAT's out of the way, I do indeed use an especially crappy version of windows. They apparently sprung for the "disconnect from the network every 5 minutes" upgrade along with the muzak system.

<geek hat on> I was back to thinking of building a physical, electronic phase inverter, with a tuneable frequency-to-block filter, as from what I've read, it would be about 2 hours to build one, debugging included. Plus I'd then have a super-cool antiboom-box that I could carry around with me. </geek hat on>

As far as trying to reasonably discuss policy with the upper management person... It's been attempted; it's been shot down; that's the way it is; so we can love it or leave.

And I think the demotivational posters would fit in quite well in here. In fact, I bet if it was in a nice frame, it would go un-noticed for weeks.

Ban Guzzi · Post by **Ban Guzzi** » Tue Sep 14, 2004 12:34 pm

Show up early/ stay late and disconnect the speakers near you. Better yet, cut the little resister out from behind the speaker by the magnet.

or just find where the sound feed comes into the room and clip it.

Viola'!!

...maybe...

Post by **DerGolgo** » Tue Sep 14, 2004 12:57 pm

Orthodoxgypsy wrote: If you then add a gate delay thingo like you were talking about, it would seem to me like you'd only have a really fancy ear-splitting shriek machine.

The delay gate was for the analogue version I described earlier.
And yeah, you are probably right - small and squishy OS ain't gonna cut it. If only music were of a moderately constant wavelength, a mike and amp alone would work, but apparently the smashinator is a greater geek than myself and has already figured out how to do it.

Therefore, I hereby petition the smashinator to not only post pics of the finished project but also a little video with sound to demonstrate it's operation.

Of course, he might as well get his hands on a horn antenna with a nice, little, high powered microwave generator and aim the lot at the cd player (or wherever the muzak comes from). But that would be too extreme, I think.

smashinator · Post by **smashinator** » Tue Sep 14, 2004 3:22 pm

DerGolgo wrote: If only music were of a moderately constant wavelength, a mike and amp alone would work, but apparently the smashinator is a greater geek than myself and has already figured out how to do it.

Therefore, I hereby petition the smashinator to not only post pics of the finished project but also a little video with sound to demonstrate it's operation.

My understanding is that I can just use a mike straight into the inverting input of an opamp (with output going to a speaker), and that will be sufficient. Having a filter will (as I understand) just give me some control over what can get into my cone of silence.

Soooo.... what's this about a delay gate?

Also, pics will certainly be posted.

Post by **DerGolgo** » Tue Sep 14, 2004 3:56 pm

The delay gate is for fine tuning so that the soundwaves interfere correctly. You can, alternatively, move your speaker or mike around until it works, but this means you can delay the signal to your speaker with a little extra precision as the signal will move through your amp faster than it will through air. You wouldn't want it to produce soundwaves that are ahead of the ambient sound. No. You don't.

On the other hand, I suppose the distance on your table won't be so big that you will really need it.

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Muzak is the mind killer.

Muzak is the mind killer.