The Shaking

Chapter Eleven

Woppa Burga.

As Jason Wallace entered the branch by the staff entrance he felt as if he was leaving the realms of daylight and entering a claustrophobic prison. Once his initial relief at finally getting a job after a great deal of trying and at least having a foot on the bottom rung of the career ladder had worn off, the dissatisfaction of working in such an awful place had begun to set in, then festered into a loathing at the company and all it represented.

There was much to despise: The brightly coloured interior decor of the restaurants for a start; redolent of a children's preschool play group. Not for this business the stripped wood, natural earth tones and 'healthy options' of their competitors; instead Woppa Burga proved that you could never aim too low at your target demographic, and there was always money to be made from the unsophisticated end of the market. Jason cringed at the excruciating contortions of the English language written into the menus; deliberately contrived by experts with degrees in English to appeal to the barely literate.

He also found the warm airless fug of frying oil - something not even the best kitchen extraction systems could completely remove - stifling and uncomfortable. He hated being expected to be artificially cheerful in spite of being paid a pittance, while being constantly busy and on his feet all the time exhausted him. Over time Wallace's contempt developed for the humiliatingly servile uniforms, the dimwitted staff, and the even more stupid patrons: Dull eyed, moon faced, pasty complexioned, obese, shabbily dressed, gum chewing, tattooed oiks and their badly behaved brats.

The company's saturation advertising campaigns pandering to the lowest common denominator customer base made Jason's flesh crawl. But must of all Wallace had grown to detest, with a vehemence he scarcely could have believed possible, the incessant piped music which played within the premises: It was literally beginning to drive him mad.

If he could have his way as a manager he would ensure it was silenced for good; but he no longer had that option. Now, like so many other aspects of the Woppa Burga operation, the in-house music had become directly controlled by Head Office. It was their choice as to the content and even the volume - which Jason considered to be far too loud - of what was played in the outlets.

The aural equivalent of a bad smell continued to gnaw away at his wellbeing; stressing him. Like a chipped tooth or a cold sore it was something that couldn't be ignored. While it was possible to look away from an unpleasant sight, he found it impossible to listen away from the irritating sounds. Wallace found as time passed he was becoming ever more sensitised to the noxious noise.

Over recent years this aural pollution had become pervasive. Seemingly it was thought people were unable to function without constant Frankenstein jolts of stimulation through their ears; and just as cows were found to be more productive when played music, so vacant minds comforted by an ever present lullaby were more susceptible to being influenced. Whatever the venue - shopping centres; outlets selling all manner of tacky crap at a single low price point; fast food vendors, or just about anywhere public these days - there was no escape from it.

And the 'music' sounded almost exactly the same wherever you were; probably because it was the same, produced by a single anonymous source. Filling the long gaps between the widely spaced chart artists the company deigned to pay royalties to was a never ending production line of unknown but inoffensive rappers, boy bands, and shrill or soulful divas performing hastily thrown together songs with inane lyrics snatched from a rhyming dictionary. It had become known as 'Jeremy Kyle music' or 'Burger Rock': As cheap, nasty, artificial, fatuous and insipid as the surroundings or instant meals it accompanied. People would meet and fall in love to it; children grow up considering the muzak to be a normal part of their soundscape along with it playing as an audio backdrop to their 'major life events'... Just the thought made Jason cringe.