Music & the Office
What is the soundtrack to the office? Unlike workplaces in the precarious service and retail industries, there is typically no music playing. The average office space in the United States strives towards silence. In the office, music is not a communal experience. It is individually accessed through headphones—sometimes clandestinely via a single earbud—to prevent disturbing one’s coworker in the adjacent cubicle or down the hall. The song playing is a private, often secret, soundtrack to data entry and grant proposals, emails back to one’s boss and surfing the web on company time. The office soundtrack is usually unspoken, hidden in the shadows of business as usual.
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The office where I work is currently under renovation. This has created a division between us so-called white collar office workers and the unionized construction laborers on the other side of the curtain. Covering the front desk for the receptionist’s lunch break, I hear the radio playing on a boom box—best of the 70s, 80s, and 90s. In between commercial breaks is “Runnin’ Down a Dream” by Tom Petty followed by “Dude Looks like a Lady” by Aerosmith. On our side, it’s just the hum of the air vents, the clacking of keyboards, and the occasional ringing of a phone.
Today, I went to search for a file in the makeshift hallway file room. It’s adjacent to the curtain separating the area where the construction action was happening. Seeping through to our side was the sound of Black Sabbath’s greatest hits. There was something almost dangerous about this music in the context of the corporate office space—as if traveling back in time to the very birth of heavy metal as it threatened the safety and security of the conservative dominant culture. I went back to my desk and listened to Sabbath through my earbuds, as if hearing these songs for the first time, anew.
I thought back to my last job in Philly. At the coffeeshop, my coworker Becca would occasionally put on a Sabbath album which I grew to appreciate more and more. One day, our least favorite regular customer heard the sludgy guitar riffs and unmistakable vocal chords of young Ozzy belting through the speakers after putting in her special food and drink requests. And just like every other day, she did not leave us a tip.
“Who is this playing?!” she asked.
“Black Sabbath,” we responded.
“Oh, it’s just awful!”
From that point on, every time she walked through the door and settled down for a visit we cued up her new least favorite band.
From the office to the coffeeshop, music can be a weapon to reclaim one’s dignity or at least help make it through the shift without losing your mind. Under the right conditions, music has the potential to point toward something beyond curtains that divide; to a world beyond capitalism.
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As the work day drags on, we sit in our respective cubicles almost 100 miles apart. We listen to the playlists we shared with each other. “Yours is helping to make my day here more pleasant.” Our imaginations are crushed by Excel spreadsheets and deadlines, but the music playing in our headphones keep us centered. This personalized soundtrack to a dreary Tuesday afternoon in the office keeps us going. These songs help bridge the gap between the double lives we live. We are physically at work but our minds are hitchhiking across state lines—dreaming up adventures as a Bowie song kicks in and the data reports melt away into the gutters of the corporate septic system. “It's like I'm keeping you company at work.” I smile and forget what the fuck I'm even supposed to be doing. What am I doing? I wish we were dancing instead. I want to feel this music and nothing else. No more distractions or to-do lists or e-mail notifications. Just beats and rhythms and melodies and vibrations and heartbeats. More music, less work.
Matt Dineen
Matt Dineen lives, works, and sings karaoke in Philadelphia. He organizes and hosts events at Wooden Shoe Books and Records, an all-volunteer anarchist collective on South Street. Dineen is the founder of The Music & Work Project and author of the zine Not for You: Stories of Music and Work from the Precarious Service Industry (Mad House, 2015).