'AITA for switching the speaker at work?' 'I can't STAND country music.'
"AITA for switching the speaker at work because I can’t stand country music?"
Me (20f) and my coworker (21m, I'll call him J) got into an argument this morning. We work at a place with a speaker that the employees connect to it and play our own playlists as long as they’re clean. An issue this summer is a different coworker will play nothing but country for 5+ hours straight.
Unfortunately J has also recently started playing nothing but country even though I’ve literally never heard him play country or even talk about liking it. The country music has gotten to the point that one of our managers has said in the work gc to not play “only country” for a whole shift (it’s fine to play a country song every now and then just not the WHOLE time) unfortunately they both still do.
This morning when J connects to the speaker he starts playing country and I give it like 30ish minutes for a non-country song to play (it was only country) so I decide to just add enough stuff to the queue that i’ll be off before i have to hear another country song.
Luckily the jam popped up so I started adding songs (older songs and 2000s pop music) when my songs started playing he turned off his jam so I connected to the speaker (multiple people can be on it at once) and tried playing my music and he kept pausing it and it was like this for a while to the point other people told us to cut it out and he gave up at that point and let me have the speaker.
I did kind of laugh when it was happening because I guess I wanted to convey that I wasn’t upset and I was trying to be lighthearted but maybe he took offense to that? When it was happening here’s my best recollection of the convo. J “give me a good reason that I can’t play country.” “I’m not listening to nothing but country.” J “no give me an actual good reason why you don’t like it and I can’t play it."
“Okay fine you want an actual good reason why we shouldn’t play country music? what if I played classical music? country is for a specific group of people and isn’t what the majority of people like."
J “plenty of people like country. Also country pop exists." "No because the majority of people know and listen to pop music so we should just play that. Also your manager, your BOSS said not to play nothing but country and that should be enough of a reason." J “it wasn’t only country music." “The playlist was called ‘country music’ so yes it was only country music.”
He wasn’t yelling at me but he was pretty upset. Did I make it a bigger deal than it needed to be? Country music makes me feel homicidal and at first I thought it was funny but I guess he didn’t, but I’ve had some of my favorite songs skipped or have been booted from the speaker before and I've never made a fuss.
I'm newer so I clarified some things in the comments somewhere but I don’t know how to pin it somehow? Thanks for all the responses and opinions!
Here's what people had to say to OP:
ExOhioGuy said:
As a long time manager, this is the kind of thing that drives me crazy. You try to let your team have some simple autonomy and one person has to be a difficult jerk. Now they have to have rules about what music genre everyone listens to? WTAF. NTA.
Individual-Mall-6914 said:
NTA, but the company may need to put together the playlist. Something to take the choice away from you all. This is how policies get put in place. NTA.
Individual-Mall-6914 said
NTA. Manager said stop. He didn’t. You fixed it. His ego’s bruised, but that a him problem.
AnnarethSkell said:
NTA. Manager said stop. He didn’t. You fixed it. His ego’s bruised, but that a him problem.
Cheap-Student1645 said:
NTA. This is a great way to get the speaker removed if you continue to disagree on what type of music to listen to, but it will cause some tension between you guys, knowing because of you the speaker gets taken away. They aren't being fair but are stubborn and won't see any other way. Sorry OP.
Sleepwalker0304 said:
NTA, but this will always be an issue with a public and shared speaker. When I worked at a factory that had satellite radio, every six months they would have the employees vote on their favorite stations and have a different genre for each day of the week.
Would that be a compromise? They get a country day or two and the rest are classic rock, 90s, 80s, 00s, popular music, figure it out among yourselves.
Satan_McCool said:
NTA. The fact that he suggested pop country as a compromise shows that his musical taste is a crime against humanity.