A trend that I’ve noticed over the past few years is retail workers working with one or more AirPods (or equivalent) in their ears. At first I was naive around my thinking and figured this was a way they were tapped into notices from management or something, you know, like in lieu of announcements over a loudspeaker or a ding-ding-ding-ding at Sears and Roebuck.
Silly me.
Of course the retail workers in question are listening to music in at least one ear, which is something I couldn’t manage in that environment. Today I saw a worker at a local Wendy’s with a Drive Thru headpiece on one side and an AirPod on the other. That would make me insane.
I stopped at this local Wendy’s for lunch. With careful planning this morning I spontaneously took the afternoon off from work and decided I was in the mood for chili and a baked potato from Wendy’s, so there I was in line. The Katherine of questionable skill behind the counter kept asking customers to repeat themselves as they were placing their order. While I was waiting to place my order two previous customers came up to the counter to ask for their order to be created, because in one instance she had misheard “Eight” instead of “Bacon”, resulting in the wrong meal for the customer.
I was asked to repeat my request for my chili. That’s when I noticed Katherine of Questionable Skill was working with an AirPod in her ear. Apparently her music was more important than her job.
I’ve moved on from the observation (though I’m writing about it) and am now sitting in our local Starbucks. There are more workers than customers at the moment and all of them have headsets but no AirPods (or equivalents) are in sight. I’m good with this. However, it’s probably because they have the music cranked fairly loud here. ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” is playing at rockin’ volumes, enough that I could hear the dub in the second chorus where they artificially extended some of the notes under “Queen…” before going into the bridge. (You didn’t know that was there, did you?) The volume is also loud enough to mask my tinnitus.
I’m thankful for that.
Now that I think about it, perhaps the folks working with AirPods are suffering from tinnitus and they’re masking it with music.
At the aforementioned Wendy’s, I also noted a customer using his speakerphone at a loud volume on the other side of the restaurant. I have always found speakerphone use to be rude, long before Steve Jobs blessed us with today’s modern smartphone. I once worked for man that used a speakerphone for EVERY call because he was multi-tasker at all times but master of nothing.
Some of the screeching on these speakerphones sound like glorified tinnitus to me. If the AirPod set isn’t masking tinnitus today they’ll probably have tinnitus to mask tomorrow.
