I went to the craft store and only bought the brown yarn I went to get. I’d even given myself permission to buy a 99 cent pattern or some other little dollar-or-two trinket, but I didn’t want anything badly enough to even spend that little on it. I believe it had something to do with the piped-in music.
I didn’t notice the music at first. I used to work in retail. My ears do not hear the background noise most stores call music. I didn’t notice the music at Hobby Lobby either, until I sat down to look through the pattern books and a very familiar Christian hymn came on that I hadn’t heard in a long time. I thought it was a little odd, in this day and age, for there to be a Christian hymn playing at a time when there isn’t a Christian holiday of some note, like Easter or Christmas. But well, whatever, right? I continued looking through the pattern books and tuned out the tunes.
Then I wandered around the store a little checking the prices on some things I may need in the future, and I heard another famous Christian hymn. Two hymns in less than 15 minutes seemed like an awful lot of hymns for retail piped-in music. I started paying attention, and what I found as I continued my idle shopping was that every single song played was a famous Christian hymn. I have to admit, even after all my years of working in retail and shopping in stores, I have never heard 100% Christian music piped into anything other than a Christian store … aside from during Christmas, of course (and even then, it’s a mix of secular seasonal songs and Christian songs).
To be honest, it put me right off wanting to spend any more time shopping. First off, it felt kind of in-your-face, because most companies these days don’t want to beat potential consumers over the head with religion (unless that’s what they are selling). Then it started reminding me of being in church. Even worse, I started to feel like I was at a funeral. Yup, knocked the desire to shop right out of me.
So now, in addition to Hobby Lobby rarely having the thing I need† and most of the things they do have being of suck low quality, it’s going to feel like being in a church or at a funeral while I am shopping there. Wonderful!
I didn’t think that store could come up with a new way to make me hate it, but they did. Christian hymns? Really?! What the hell are they thinking?!
Footnotes- † They now only carry McCalls and Simplicity patterns. What the hell?! Seriously, as far as sewing patterns go, those two are possibly the least useful and definitely the least stylish. Yuck. Where’s Vogue? Where’s New Look? Ack! And don’t even get me started on the continually diminishing selection of yarns. If you want novelty yarns or bulky yarns, no problem. If you want something a little more common like, say, Wool Ease? Forget it. They barely carry any name brands anymore, except their own, and every last bit of it is made in China. Ugh. [↩]
That’s because all those other pattern companies are owned by Satan.
Well, you know Vogue does make some sexy, sexy clothes patterns, and we can’t have people sewing things that are short, tight, and low-cut!
It’s seriously weird at that store now. I am so not going back ever again.
Since moving to Tallahassee, I’ve been to waaaay too many places that pipe in Christian music. And a lot of these places are fast food restaurants, like Wendy’s! Jeeze, can’t I eat awful food and kill myself slowly in peace?
Out of interest, did the owners have an accent?
I was eating lunch in varied company on Friday and we got into a comparison as to what May 1st means where. Seems in some countried it does have religious overtones, while in some former soviet countries it has different overtones entirely.
Is it just the store you go to, do you think, or is it the chain?
Which one do you go to?
The whole chain is fairly out with the Christianity, but it’s the first time I’ve heard nothing but hymns over the muzak system. I always go to the one on 183/Anderson near Lamar, and it may very well just be that store that is quite that out there with it. The next two nearest craft stores to me is another Hobby Lobby in Pflugerville, and the Joann’s over by the Domain, neither of which is nearby.
I’m going to check the other Hobby Lobby soon. It might just be that one store that has the crazy staff and they want to listen to Christian muzak all day and be buttheads. I do know though that the products will still be poorly made crap from China at that one too. And Joann’s is just too expensive on stuff and never seem to have much of what I want.
And it’s entirely possible there was nothing but Christian hymns playing every time I have ever been in there and I just never noticed. I spent too many years hearing the elevator music every day at work, and I really don’t hear it anymore, unless a particular song strikes my memory … like What A Friend We Have In Jesus, which I used to sing when I as a little kid (or when I hear Adam Ant’s Goody Two Shoes at the grocery store).