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Enough time has passed since leaving Insomniac that I feel safe sharing the story of both my greatest triumph and secret shame. A thread. CW: bathrooms
Early 2016 brought an unexpected email from HR - we were getting music in the bathrooms. A controversial plan, and factions formed between music lovers and those who wanted them to remain silent.
HR weathered the typical complaining. I wasn& #39;t crazy about the change (can& #39;t y& #39;all just wear headphones?) but wasn& #39;t particularly worked up either. They eventually settled on classical-ish Ratchet and Clank playlist.
Now, especially during summer, I got in early and was often the first person in. On one such morning I noticed the speaker had a smart card slot. Being of elevated mirth, I conceived the plan to replace the music.
I wanted something plausible but unlikely. Ultimately I settled on 12 hours of the Soviet-era composer, [Shostakovich]( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitri_Shostakovich).">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmit...
Shostakovich was a genius, sure, but to the uninitiated his music kind of sounds like it was made out of every combination of notes that aren& #39;t chords. After making the switch, I sat back and waited for hilarity to ensue.
And... nothing. Apart from one overheard incident in the bathroom ("what the... FUCK?"), there were no apparent hijinks. Did I underestimate my coworkers? Was Shostakovich too subtle?
But, a couple of days later, HR sent another email - the music had been removed. They had received an unprecedented amount of complaining, which resulted in the rare HR reversal.
The thing is... I had only replaced the music in the men& #39;s restroom. But all of the people in HR who received the complaints were women. They must have thought this torrent of complaining was about their *original playlist*.
The disconnect between folks thinking the Shostakovich auditory assault was sanctioned by HR and HR thinking that folks were incensed by vanilla, inoffensive Ratchet and Clank scores... just too good.
I had committed the perfect crime and the only downside was that I couldn& #39;t tell anyone. Things had gone too far to confess. Until today.
