Avoiding supermarket Xmas jollity.

I wonder whether it really does get people to spend more - or do most fly around quickly in an effort to escape it? If I have to visit a shop, it's going to be Waitrose!

#NEEDLE (that's the thing that scratches over the little grooves on that black disc thing...........???

Jaxjacky

I always feel sorry for the staff, weeks of the same music playing on a loop.

Me too! I think a lot of the problem is the extremely limited pool of songs!? We never ever hear the Andrews sisters bing(he di so many more than white Christmas y'know!!) Brenda Lee and loads more other classical pieces of music that are just great at this time of year, instead we get blasted with Slade/Lennon s dirge/McCartney's frogs!/ Shakey/ wizzard et Al! Come ON people have we become so lazy that nobody can be bothered to actually CHOOSE and compile a playlist? It's the easiest thing in the world to do with today's technology you don't even have to keep quiet while you put the eedle on the disc and press "record+play!!!!!!!!!"

There are some sad posts here, I wish us all a better year ahead.
Alison333 __ chuckled at that image in my head, I'll remember that next shopping trip.

I don't like Christmas because I lost my dad at Christmas 8 years ago and I find it painful. Hate most of the Christmas songs except Kirsty McCall, The Pretenders and East 17.

If I hear that banal song 'Happy Holidays' one more time, I shall chew up my shopping list, spit it out on the shop floor and jump on it!

Our local Morrison's has a quiet hour on Wednesday mornings with no music or announcements . I think probably they all do. So perhaps that's the solution for those who don 't like the music.

Waitrose doesn’t play any music.

I would go and shop in any supermarket or shopping centre that would promise NOT to play this americanised (z), synthetic, as said above, 'saccharine' music. Absolutely hate it.

We have had deliveries since 2019 and it's been a real help. We miss visiting the supermarket to browse but we can do without the tinsel and saccharine music - yuk.

I suppose its meant to put you in Christmas mode and loosen your purses! Seems to work

I feel your pain I work in retail and the constant loop of Christmas tunes is painful, sometimes I cry for those no longer with us, sometimes I sing along, sometimes I block them out. So it’s a roller coaster ride for me.

At least you can get your shopping and gone. What about about the poor staff who have to work with it day in and out for weeks. As they say you can please some ppl part of the time but you can’t please ppl all the time. Merry Christmas ?

Reading this really takes me back a decade or two.

Supermarkets here no longer play music or muzzak as we used to call it at ANY TIME OF THE YEAR, nor do they do so in Germany, and I don't remember hearing it in the Netherlands either.

In the early 1990s several studies were made that proved the various health risks that background noise (including music) had or could have on those who were exposed to it all day and most supermarkets and other chain stores banned it.

It is now most definitely a thing of the past.

I worked in social work. In the late 90s my senior boss who was overall in charge of a large area was visiting an office for a meeting. He was greeted with Xmas decorations and music playing. He rather loudly told the staff to get all the decorations down and to switch the music off. He informed the staff that not all have a jingle bell time some of the service users would have reason to want to avoid all the merriment. I knew him well, respected him for his skills and management of staff and public alike. Always remember him when I hear a the cheap nasty music playing. Prior to social work he was a Priest. I never put decorations at the front of my house, just aways try to be sensitive to others and have kept them indoors or the back garden.

I agree with stopping music completely. Morrissons were playing White Christmas last time we were there, just ghastly. People should have the choice of where, when or what music they want to listen to, everybody has different tastes, and not everybody has access to quiet stores.
Or, maybe allow just 2 hours a week, predetermined, with music, for those who feel they need it to get in the mood.
But not too loud, your experience sounds awful, SueDonim

Yes, yes, yes! I must seem mad, but if I forget the earplugs it's fingers in ears for me. I just cannot stay calm and concentrate while the jingly happens - the extra decorations, glitter 'special' everything really, really gets to me. I like Christmas, Solstice, Yule - all of it but the extra sensory input is too much. Some of them are doing quieter times - music off and lights down.

Don’t think they play music in Aldi either ?!

I do not like music in supermarkets, full stop. I wish they would stop all of it, regardless of when and what they are inflicting, sorry playing.

It must be so hard for those for whom Christmas triggers bad memories.

I’d be happy with no music, to tell the truth. Yesterday in M&S they were playing two different loops at the same time. One in the main store and a different one REALLY LOUDLY in the food dept! I might have spent more money if I hadn’t been so desperate to get out of there.

Hetty58

I shop online now - so avoid that problem. Still, I remember being very irritated by it in the past, feeling trapped with the awful music. It's as if Christmas jollity is compulsory and you're just Scrooge if you don't even fake it.

When my husband died in the November, leaving me with four kids and Christmas to organise, the inner pain was almost unbearable, the effort to function and appear 'normal' immense and exhausting.

When my husband died in the November, leaving me with four kids and Christmas to organise, the inner pain was almost unbearable, the effort to function and appear 'normal' immense and exhausting.

That has me in tears... how stoic you must have had to be at that time, coping with your grief, yet having to give the children a decent Christmas, with all that forced jollity going on around you. You must have felt you were living in a different world, being amongst happy people who were totally unaware of your pain.

So sorry for your loss Hetty and to all those who are also bereaved at this difficult time of the year.

Or even next shop, nest shop is Easter time I imagine.

Completely sympathise with your point of view OP it just goes on too long. Pushing my heavy trolley around Sainsburys today, God knows where all the smaller ones were, for what seemed an interminable amount of time, listening to among other horrors, "it's the most wonderful time of the year" given the worrying couple of years we have been living through, it really isn't appropriate at all.

My nest shop will be on Sunday and that will be Waitrose where thank God they don't play Christmas shite

Thanks Tilly Trotter it might get harder to avoid people when the kids have broken up from school