Forget muzak, Seattle-based Mad Pizza decided to spice up their hold music by playing N.W.A’s “Fuck Tha Police.” Clint Brownlee over at Seattlest made the discovery on Sunday night while trying to order a pizza.
When the Mad Pizza dude picked up the line again we were conflicted–should we ask if he knew (or cared) what people on hold were hearing? Should we pretend to be offended and hang up? We stammered and, lacking the adventurous nature of our 15-year old self, just ordered a pizza.
We would gladly listen to N.W.A rather than the bland mix of soft jazz or lite rock most companies use to avoid offending anyone’s delicate sensibilities. Do you care what you listen to while on hold? Tell us in the comments. — CAREY GREENBERG-BERGER
Parental Advisory: This Hold Music Contains Explicit Lyrics [Seattlest]
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Well, at least it wasn’t Sir Mix-A-Lot’s “Baby Got Back.”
@shiznannigan: Yes, but the message “Fuck (you)” ain’t likely gonna win those cop dollars. BTW, I know most cops are thick-skinned enough to blow this off. I’m just saying that “Fuck (any category of potential customers]” is just really awful customer relationship strategy in general. If I ran a business, I could set my on-hold message to say “Fuck da Consumerist posters and commenters.” I may not mean anything by it and it’d probably entertain more than offend (and probably get an article here), but it’d still be just really stupid to insult potential customers, period.
Good. Maybe people should be offended. They should sue Mad Pizza because “What if a 12 year old bishop who’s also a cop called and was insulted?” Maybe Mad Pizza is happy with a small but wise-eared customer base. It may not be wise, but who wants to make pizza for easily offended people? Maybe they’ll read these comments and decide not to listen to NWA anymore, lest they offend Public Enemy.
My dad’s a cop, I doubt he’d care. I think however we both agree a better choice of song would be “Fuck the Lawyers”. Someone has to have made that song.
@BII: “The company I work for now uses classical music in the stores”
This is such a brutal abuse of classical music. For God’s sake, use Kenny G. That’s why God created him. Don’t destroy Mahler or Liszt because you (general you) think classical music makes good “background” music because you don’t understand it! ARGH!
@XopherMV: It’s funny that somebody from such a cultured place, like Seattle — that apparently invented cool — is so ignorant of the rest of the world.
@MentalDisconnect: What, and get sued to oblivion?
@MichaelBrazell: I’m not sure what or who you mean by “ignorant of the rest of the world”.
If you were referring to me, then it is you who are speaking out of ignorance. As an Army brat, I was born in Washington, DC. I grew up in New York, Missouri, Texas, New Mexico, California, Washington state, and Germany. Sometimes I lived in a big city, sometimes in a suburb, and sometimes in the country. I graduated high school in California. I attended college in Texas and Washington state.
So, when I speak of different places or regions, I speak from actual knowledge – not ignorance. The fictional town of Hicksville, Mississippi, certainly referenced all of Mississippi, but could include the entire South. I mentioned the banning of Dungeons and Dragons and teen dances because that actually happened. Those policies were pushed by Christian conservatives.
Now, if you’re not referring to me, who exactly were you referring to?
lol, this reminds me of a trashed high school friend who crashed his car trying to chase down some idiot who was talking shit (not the sharpest tool in the shed)… anyway, as he’s getting stitches in his head, the cop makes small talk before taking him off to jail and asked asked him what music he was listening to before crashing and he replies “nwa, fuck the police”.
@trai_dep: What lawsuit was that?
i think there should be a law that ALL hold music has to be “The Taco Bell Cannon”, by that dead guy Taco Bell.
you remember when that song was on every other TV commercial? one reason i don’t watch TV anymore.
the worst music, i find, is classic rock. soft jazz i can ignore, but ‘Stairway to Hotel Freebird” just makes me insane. do we really need to hear it again? do you really need to play a song that EVEROBODY knows ALL the words to? I thought that listening to your parents music WASN’T cool?
WTF?/??/?!1
If I had to listen to any form/sort of rap music whilst on hold, I’d immediately hang up, regardless of the content.
Best on-hold music I’ve ever heard goes to the FAA bureau in Miami, FL which had “The Best of Jimmy Buffett” on hold…including, “Why don’t we get drunk and screw.” Alas, they took it off about 2-3 years ago, which is a shame. Made waiting the file a flight plan a bit more enjoyable.
Who really cares what the hold music is? The song referenced in this blog; well that is just one of those you have fun with. “Oh my-guess what the hold music is? HA HA”
If you don’t like the hold music you can always take your business elsewhere.
Perhaps if it were something other or more professional than a pizza joint just say to the employee, “did you know what your hold music is playing …” and leave it at that.
this makes me want to buy pizza from them.
@justatwork: “tolerance is a two way street” is a rather curious justification for calling someone else’s music “degrading, obscene, and violent”.
@Bon Jour, Pee Wee: Too bad they’re not using Richard Cheese’s version of Like a Virgin… if they’re going to smother us with background music, it might as well be humerous.
Once upon a time I was an Assistant Manager for a Starbucks, one day I figured how to jimmy the tape deck so it would play music using that discman to tape casset hookup thingy (you know the one we all had in our cars before you got a cd player in the dash). Anyway, lets just say Stabucks’ corporate mix of Sarah Mc(whatever) and Elton John was not the music played on my shifts.
I always did like seeing the customers faces when at 5:45AM they walked in to techno music.
Lets hear some dead prez next time….that will ruffle some feathers!
“…And it don’t stop till we get these crackers off our block!”
//I’m white
//dead prez is great
@cde: There is a blockquote tag: [blockquote] [/blockquote] but use angle brackets (
I personally really like NWA and this song (to a point). But the message is horrible. Songs that promote hate, violence, and/or killing people I think that really isn’t the message anyone should send to anyone, and if they like to listen to it keep it to yourself for the most part (try at least). I know they are just making pizzas and not sending “messages” but this negative crap is everywhere. Isn’t that kind of the issue with the world today. A general lack of respect for people and things. I love the idea of different hold music but NWA has a bunch of other songs that are great and don’t need to be sprung on people as they order a pizza. I think the song selection is poor but the idea as a whole is great.
I’m going to go ahead and say that I prefer the Wu-Tang to NWA, myself, but that people need to stop being so scared of foul language. Wah waaah wah. It’s a pizza place.
Heh. One time I brought some CDs to listen to while doing some server work over the weekend. The next weekend, I was back, but my CDs were missing. On Monday, I asked my boss if he’d seen them, and he said, “oh, the new holiday music? I put it in the changer.” As in, the CD changer that played our company’s hold music. I don’t remember everything our customers were treated to for a week, but I do know it included both Clutch and the Butthole Surfers.
Nobody complained. Maybe they were just happy not to be subjected to endless repeats of Frosty the Snowman and Feliz Navidad?
My best hold experience ever was back in the mid 1990s. I think it was around the time Windows 95 came out, and I had to call MS tech support for something. Their hold music actually had a live DJ, who told us what songs were coming up next, and how long the wait in each hold queue was: “Word 6 people have about a 12 minute wait. And you people in the Windows 95 line? Ouch. At least 72 minutes to go.” I don’t even remember what the music was, but that was very cool.
After “Fuck da police” (this thread encourages a fun F-bomb count), maybe they should play “One in a Million” by Guns N’ Roses? Since shock value seems to be all that matters.
@RulesLawyer: Funny. Is it awesome or sad that there’s a hold music dj?
“Papercutninja says:
Soft Jazz is not music. It’s hot garbage. There has not been any jazz created in the last 40 years that doesn’t sound like noisy, too-cool-for-the-room dreck. I’m glad they used NWA.”
friend, we should probably acknowledge the clear distinction between smooth jazz (predominantly synth music, programmed on a computer) and jazz (predominantly saxophone, a wind instrument designed centuries ago that emulates dying geese).
though i do fancy “too-cool-for-the-room” music, i admittedly do have NWA on my iPod (variety calms me).
peace! *dropz mic*
@laborer: There has not been any jazz created in the last 40 years that doesn’t sound like noisy, too-cool-for-the-room dreck. Gotta argue with you. Modern ‘jazz’ does suck (what the hell ever happened to improvisation?! It’s one of the esential elements of jazz!). But not all the of the last forty years. Miles Davis’ seventies material is absolutely incredible (although though definitetly not for all tastes.)
@Bay State Darren: not to turn yet another NWA+pizza topic into a jazz argument…
i agree, the essential elements of jazz being improvisation, with no help from computers, and so on. however, this does not negate the distinction between “jazz” and “smooth jazz”, regardless of how inappropriate that label may be.
i’ve never heard of “Soft Jazz” as Papercutninja calls it… if he/she meant to say “smooth jazz”, i disagree, as it is very appropriate hold music. if they are referring to real jazz, i agree – it probably isn’t the most appropriate hold music… unless, of course, i was living a hundred years ago on a southern swamp where blowing air through pipes sounds appealing for lack of anything better to do.
oopz, did i say that out loud? perhaps i should improvise less…
Years ago when I was toiling in HR, I had to recruit a candidate from WMS (Williams), the video game company. Their on-hold music was from their then-hot product, Mortal Kombat. Seriously, spines being ripped out to cool techno. I was disappointed once the guy finally picked up.
I had an awful time with hold music a few weeks ago. I was calling Torrid’s customer service line, and they played Fall Out Boy at me. And then My Chemical Romance. And then something I couldn’t identify, but it still sucked. This maybe could have been managable if I weren’t on hold for over 20 minutes.
This is what I get for calling Hot Topic, I suppose…
Hi,
My name is Justin. I’m the Director of operations for mad pizza. I would like to start off by apologizing for the choice of on hold music. This is a new store and new employees. They did not realize that the music played on the in store satellite radio is the same music that the people on hold listen to. They assumed because they were alone in the restaurant that it would be OK. I myself had to hold back some laughter at this. After all like more then one responder said “this is Seattle”. But in all seriousness I am sorry if this offended anyone and can assure you that ALL employees have been informed about this.
thank you.
Justin at madpizza