The new marketing hire started a collaborative office playlist and I think it might cause a mutiny.

By @judekindof · Work

She meant it as a fun, team-building activity for our open-plan office. Instead, it has become a relentless, day-long battle of passive-aggressive song additions and audible groans.

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I'm a senior designer on a team with about a dozen people. The office vibe has always been pretty quiet—everyone uses headphones. Then our new, very enthusiastic marketing coordinator decided we needed more 'synergy' and 'auditory cohesion.' She created a massive collaborative playlist and presented it at the weekly stand-up. The first day was a novelty. The second day, the cracks started to show. One person added three hours of uninterrupted, melancholic indie folk. A sales guy, in an act of open rebellion, queued up five explicit trap songs in a row, which nobody noticed until the F-bombs started dropping during a client call. Our manager, trying to be a 'cool boss,' keeps adding dad-rock from the 80s and turning it up slightly every time one of his songs comes on. Now, it's a silent war. You'll see someone add a song, and three minutes later, someone else will subtly skip it. Someone keeps adding the 10-minute version of Taylor Swift's 'All Too Well' and I suspect it's a deliberate act of sabotage to kill 10 minutes of the day. A few of us have created a private chat just to comment on the chaos. The new hire thinks it's a huge success because 'everyone is so engaged' with the playlist. We are engaged, but it's the kind of engagement that precedes a formal complaint to HR. I've gone back to wearing my noise-canceling headphones, but I feel like I'm missing out on the drama.

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