Death by Muzak

My company's preparing for a major software conversion over the next year. There are separate groups for different parts of the conversion; I'm on the knowledge management team that's working on the knowledgebase conversion piece. Every week for the past several months we've had a one-hour conference call because our group members are spread out from Richmond, BC, to Irvine, CA, to St. Pete, FL, to Herndon, VA. I'm usually a couple of minutes early logging on to the call. The hold music is AWFUL.

It's one instrumental song. It plays over and over again. It has some combination of steel drum, piano, and flute music. It plays over and over again. No other songs ever enter the rotation. It plays over and over again. It's awful.

Last week, I didn't get the updated meeting information so I didn't know that we were starting a half hour later than usual. I listened to that horrible song over and over again for a full 25 minutes before I messaged a coworker, Steve, who should have been on the line to ask if I was the only one listening to the hold music. He laughed (technically he messaged "Hahaha" animated .gifs to me) and informed me of the later start time. But it was too late.

The song was stuck in my head.

It stayed there for the rest of the day.

It haunted my dreams that night.

This week I knew the meeting start time hadn't changed. I called in a couple of minutes early. The awful song taunted me. But this week we had fun with it. After ineffectively mocking the deceptively happy tune for a bit, Steve and I came up with some lyrics for it. They included some playful "this song makes me want to die" types of things, followed by cheery "this song sounds like crap" lines. We wrapped it up with pleasant "making my ears bleed" ideas. Then he penned a title for it. "Death by Muzak." Yes! And just in case you can't imagine how awful this song is, consider Steve's comparison: "That song sounds like Kenny G on crack."