Could licensing have been the reason? Not sure about the US, but in Europe, you frequently need a separate license to play songs in stores, bars or really any kind of public venue. I imagine this is probably even stricted in the US. So the crappy mix might have been the only thing they had bothered buying licenses for - and they might have been afraid to get sued when playing anything else.

I still can feel the pain though, and I have no idea why the bosses didn't even bother to give a reason. So I guess quitting was the best thing to do.

My main boss was pretty miserable but loved ordering people around like he was the king. He once tried to convince me to go to a conference about cell phones, on my own time and my own money, because... I don't know, I guess he thought I needed to know more about the devices I was selling. I never had problems selling phones to people or helping people with issues, so of course I didn't do it.

Because why would you empower someone to fix problems, when you can give them just enough authority to act as a glorified day care overseer and only pay them a couple bucks more than their employees?

Maybe if I like 'x' brand, I'll also enjoy their store playlist... could be the key to finding lots of great music.

It actually is. My wife has the sort of job where she spends a lot of time in high-end retail stores, and at that level the music is very important so she's very aware of it.

It's not just selecting the right music, but making sure your company isn't playing the same songs as the competition.

CBS Sunday Morning had a nice long piece about this last year.

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/02/st...

Reminds me of working in a big box electronics store during college. One day I answer the phone and the line sounds dead, but I say "hello" a few times and a woman finally acknowledges me and then goes on a long rant about what the world is coming to and she can't believe it. She eventually gets to her relevant question and I answer it. I didn't think too much of it because strange interactions with customers aren't all that rare.

A few hours later I answer another call and it's a teenage boy and he's just laughing but quickly acknowledges me and we sort out his problem. Again, didn't really think too much of it.

The third call I got was from the store manager. "Oh my god. What is going on over there?" "What do you mean?" "Nevermind, go check the hold music CD and change it to something else. Anything else." "Was that it?" "Ya". I go change the CD and carry on.

About an hour later the night shift restock crew comes in. A few minutes later one of them comes out and asks me if I had seen a CD he left in the warehouse CD player last night. My eyes open like I've seen a ghost and he's like, "What?"

The thing you have to know is that the night crew are all West African and they listen to the most hardcore gangster rap you've ever heard in your motherfucking life. The warehouse stereo he's talking about is actually for the store's PBX (phone system). It was in the back warehouse and there was a small bookshelf stereo system next to it with a CD player that was on loop to feed the hold music into the phone system.

After the store closes and the phones stop ringing, the night crew switches the CD to their music. Apparently someone had turned the volume down to take a phone call so they forgot that CD was still in the transport. The amp volume doesn't affect the line out volume so it was still feeding the phone system.

We laughed. Oh, we laughed so hard. Then I paged all the other employees over and told the story and they laughed too. The assistant manager laughed the hardest, then he went and called the store manager. He already knew of course.

The warehouse crew was no longer allowed to use the hold music stereo.