David and Daniel Save the Day
I complained in my last post that the other staff in the store get annoyed if I put on ambient music when I want to chill out a little. The final straw was last week on (thankfully) a pretty quiet day when I turned around to ask a colleague a question and realized that they’d disappeared.
In fact, the store was empty and I was the only one behind the counter. Right before I began to panic the door to the stockroom opened and all three of the staff paraded out on pajamas, clutching teddy bears, and laid out mats at the front of the store. They then lay down and pretended to go to sleep. Hmmm, funny, funny. Since I’m such an expert on management and human relations I suspected that they were trying to send me a message. (Nope, no flies on me!)
So we took a long lunch that day to talk about finding a balance where we’d all be comfortable. Surprisingly, they were all perfectly comfortable with the idea that I wanted to hear relaxing and downbeat music some of the time; their only objection was my choice of music. Thankfully Dave, one of our slightly older employees (yes, I work surrounded with young 20-somethings who all think I’m outrageously old) had a good suggestion.
So ever since the pajama protest, when I need a fix of relaxing and calm music I’ve been playing Daniel Lanois’ newest release, the Omni collection. It’s a very cool collection of snippets of instrumental tracks for guitar and or piano, and is very lightly themed. It sort of has the feeling of him cleaning out his musical closets and discovering bits and pieces of music that he’s had lying around for a while.
Gorgeous stuff, moody and evocative … relaxing without being soporific, as Dave so wisely said.
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