Tiny Privileges

Whenever I go out to a restaurant that plays pop music, P!nk’s “Just Give Me A Reason” is playing.
That song is like pouring live ants in my ear.
It’s not that it’s a terrible song – I quite like P!nk, even if I keep wanting to pronounce her name with an alveolar click – but that it doesn’t hold up well on repetition.  It’s a simple, repetitive melody that’s not helped at all by Nate Reuss’s overly earnest response.  I’d wrung everything I needed to hear out of that song by the fifth time I heard it, and yet every time I walk into Jersey Mike’s for a sandwich, there P!nk is, annoying the crap out of me with this summer’s overplayed ballad.
And I’m grateful.
I’ve worked either at home or in an office for nearly twenty years now, having escaped what looked to be a lifetime of retail.  And I remember being stuck listening to the awful loop of whatever it was that our management had decided was pleasurable for our customers – in some cases, the same 45-minute sampler CD that looped over and over again until we found ways to quietly disable it.  Having to listen repeatedly to songs we had come to loathe was just another reminder of how insignificant we were in the scheme of things – low-paid grunts encouraged to shut up and smile no matter what the inconvenience.
Having control over what I can listen to?  That’s a power.  One that might go away if I get another job, a temporary benefit I’m going to relish for today.  It makes me feel a little sad for all the millions of people out there being force-fed Ya Mo’ B There one more time.  And it makes me appreciate the fact that I’m going to put on Fall Out Boy and listen to it until that wears thin, which it will, and then I can quietly discard it.