Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Something weird going on at Quiznos

Sometimes I go for lunch at the Quiznos in Airdrie, near where I work. I don't know if what I'm about to describe is typical of all Quiznos, because I don't go there often, so your mileage may vary.

At the Quiznos in Airdrie, they've instituted some kind of musical torture where the music playing over the sound system is real, identifiable music by known artists, but the timbre of the music has been artificially altered, as if it was run through an Alvin and the Chipmunks filter. The tempo of the music is just right, it's only the timbre of the instruments and vocals that has been shifted one or two octaves higher than it should be.

I don't know why they're doing it. Maybe to appease the copyright gods. Maybe the people running the store have a defective mp3 player. Maybe these employees like listening to electronically altered music. I don't care what the reason is. STOP IT! As I was eating my Angus beef sub (what made them famous - according to the sign), I felt myself slowly going batshit insane, my brain instinctively telling me that what I was hearing was an abomination, a mutation, and it grated against every fibre of my being. Benny and the Jets played a-la Alvin and the gang is a guaranteed recipe for mayhem and disaster. I had to quickly finish my meal and get the hell out of the store before I felt the urge to grab a handful of jalapeno peppers and mash them into my face.

Maybe that's the point - irritate the hell out of the customers so that they don't loiter. It's an effective tool, but I can easily see someone on the brink being driven into an uncontrollable rage and terrorizing the store and everyone unfortunate enough to be in it at the time.

STOP IT!

1 comment:

Retro Blog said...

Simple explanation,THEY. CANNOT. HEAR. THE. MUSIC. They are acclimated and have tuned it out. Kind of like living downwind of a rendering factory. oh wait that smell defies acclimitization. r