- In the final months of the year, some retail workers start dreading the holiday playlists they hear on the job.
- In a Change.org petition, one person compares Mariah Carey's 'All I want For Christmas Is You' to torture.
Mariah Carey's hit, "All I Want For Christmas is You," dominates the airwaves every holiday season, and while some might enjoy the song's annual return, retail workers are fed up.
Despite the 1994 tune's success, at least three separate petitions were created on Change.org over the years to get rid of it, the Wall Street Journal reports.
One petitioner is seeking help from the Federal Communications Commission to ban it from retail spaces and the radio.
The petitioner — Mark R. — compared repetitive holiday music to "musical torture" and called Carey's song "a symbol of holiday dread and cabin fever due to it's extensive airplay on both holiday radio and store overhead music."
But it's not just Carey's catchy classic that has retail workers at their wits' end. The end of the year brings playlists with several renditions of recognizable holiday tunes that play for hours as customers shop and dine out.
According to Bloomberg, retailers Old Navy and Gap started playing their "highly curated" holiday playlists before Halloween while Walgreens and Burlington waited for Black Friday to crank out the Christmas tunes.
Lenell Kutzner told WSJ she was "scarred" after working in a grocery store for two holiday seasons – particularly by 1984 hit "Last Christmas" by Wham!.
"You couldn't get a moment of peace," Kutzner told WSJ, adding that it even played in the restrooms.
Streaming companies like SiriusXM and Pandora have teams dedicated to creating store playlists, and brands use musicologists to choose songs that strike "a perfect mood for customers," Bloomberg reported.
However, for employees, listening to the same songs for eight hours or more isn't so perfect. Music professor Elizabeth Margulis explained to Bloomberg the negative effect of repeatedly hearing a song.
"There's a non-linear response to repetition," Margulis said. "There's this point where it turns around and starts going down the other side."
She added: "Often at the end you like it even less than in the beginning."
In short, you'll get sick of any song you hear for hours each day.