LONDON, Dec. 24 (UPI) -- Forcing store clerks to listen to the same holiday music over and over could be akin to torture and should change, a British noise pollution group said. The UK Noise Association and labor unions are suggesting legal action on behalf of store employees who listen to endless looped recordings of holiday music, the Observer said Sunday.
"What we're saying is that, if Christmas carols are being played on the same CD repeatedly, that could create an unhealthy working environment. It must drive people to distraction," said Paul Clarke, spokesman for the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers.
Exposure to the same music constantly is "no different to being tortured," added Val Weedon, the noise association's national coordinator.
Legal action could be difficult. An employment lawyer said employees would have to demonstrate that their employers could reasonably foresee any illness.
This means there would have to be some form of notice that an employee "had some vulnerability to Christmas music, the ill health in question, or both," the lawyer said.
| Wow. I wonder about the previous decades of employees everywhere in the West who were "vulnerable to Christmas music" or were "totrured by the repetition". Obviously, there will be Heaven to pay for this egregious harm. |