i come into work at 10:00 every morning but sunday, when i come in at 8:00, and monday, when i don’t come in… in this order, this is what i do:

1. check to see if there’s any dirty laundry to do, and if so run it.
2. begin putting angel costumes into dryers.
3. plug in ipod
4. retrieve necessary hangers for angel costumes
5. get coffee from kitchen
and then the day continues… i won’t go into more inane details.

note step 3. the ipod. at 10:00, when i come in, i am the only person in the artistic tent, which is the large tent behind the “big tent,” where the dressing rooms, practice spaces, wardrobe department and physio department are. the cleaning guys come in soon after, but they have their own ipods, and don’t care. i play my music loudly because i’m all over the space with the costumes at that time, and there’s no one to disturb.

the hula hoop girl, masha, sometimes comes in to practice in the mornings. usually i don’t see her come in, and am surprised when suddenly i am being drowned out by HER ipod, plugged into a different stereo, on the other side of the tent. since hers was the louder stereo, i usually either turned mine off or gave up trying to hear mine for the rest of my shift. which began to suck, because she plays exactly the same bad russian pop every day.

so around a week and a half ago, i decided to talk with her. so i approached her and here is how the conversation went:

S: hi! so, i think you don’t like my music…?
M: (general stare)
S: well, that’s fine… i don’t mind. i don’t like your music either. (big big smile)
M: (general stare)
S: so, listen, i had an idea: if i move the speakers for my music closer to me, and turn them so they face my little work area, my music will not be so audible to you, and you won’t need to drown me out with your volume. so you could turn yours down, too. what do you think?
M: (general stare)
S: (big smile, eyebrows raised)
M: uh, ok…
S: thanks! that’s great! i’ll go take care of that right now!

so i went over, turned mine down. so did she. and about 30 minutes later, i asked her if it was working ok for her, and she said, “yeah”.

the next day, another performer, rosha, came over to me and asked me if it would be ok if she and masha turned up their music so they could practice their routine. i tried to explain that i wasn’t trying to stop them from what they needed to do, just that i thought we were playing unnecessary stereo wars. rosha repeated the question. so i said, sure that would be fine, thanks for checking…

🙂 kind of funny, really. i didn’t mean to sound like a music nazi, just to find some way we could peacefully coexist. oh well. at least now i’m not subjected to the same repetitive song every day.