Music and hostile work environment. Yes or no?

Great Debates
1

I know a guy in his late 30s who works at a McDonalds. About half the employees are black, and he is white. However, he works in the grill area, and almost all the employees that work in grill are black. There is a radio in the grill area. This guy absolutely hates rap music. Many employees insist on playing the local rap station, often at loud levels. This irritates him no end, and he keeps turning the radio down, and some of the other employees keep turning it up.

A few days ago he complained to the head manager about this, who is white. She seemed sympathetic, and she herself isn’t thrilled by rap music. She even suggested he should try turning the radio to a top 40 station in the area, which has a mixed format. This station does play a fair amount of non-rap R&B, which he doesn’t mind. However, the black employees keep switching it back.

The head manager said if things didn’t improve, he should talk to her again. However, her attitude when he first talked to her is she thought he was an oddball person, as he was the only one complaining. He responded that might be because most of the other white employees may have just quit in disgust because of the music. He even brought up the issue that this might be racial discrimination, even though it was unintentional by management. This guy doesn’t think the head manager is actually trying to disriminate based on race. Although, the restaurant is located in an area where black people are just 4% of the population. According to the census data, there are actually more people in that area of Asian decent (7%). The population of the entire county is just 11% black, so I must say it is suspicious that in a restaurant in the whitest part of the county would have 20 out of 40 workers being black. However, random chance does mean this could happen without anyone discriminating.

This guy has no desire to inflict his music on anyone else. In fact he commented to the head manager that playing any other radio station except this one rap station would be fine by him. His musical tastes are indeed very diverse. He just hates rap. (Although he really enjoys most other forms of black music. He even listens to classic blues on a local PBS station when they play it one evening a week.)

His concern is that if he makes a stink about this with the head manager, she’ll find some excuse to fire him, or cut his hours down to near zilch. He’s considering contacting the company human resource people and make the complaint with them to make retalliation difficult. However, the flip side it might be better to deal with the head manager, as she may get pissed more at him going over her head about the issue rather than try working it out first.

Now the questions and debate part. Do you think this situation is some form of harassment/discrimination? And secondly, would Human Resources likely see this as a meritorious complaint? While direct racial discrimination (hiring and firing based on race) violates the law, nothing I can find in the laws that loud rap music in the workplace is discrimination in and of itself. My hunch is this guy is just screwed, and will have to find work elsewhere. Even though IMO given there is no need for loud rap music in a kitchen, if they can him or cut his hours to near zilch this would be morally wrong.

2

I forgot to add this to the previous post. The rap station in question doesn’t play music with anti-white lyrics. If they did, then this surely would be discrimination. His objection isn’t to the lyrics, but the fact the music just is totally unlistenable.

3

The majority of rap music is purchased and listened to by white people. It would be utterly impossible to establish that playing rap music is discriminatory.

4

Interesting. Have a cite on that? I would have thought otherwise.

5

No.

No.

We knew he was screwed as soon as you typed “a guy in his late 30s who works at a McDonalds” unless he is mentally disabled.

You are wrong. It wouldn’t be.

Apropos of nothing, do you know alaricthegoth?

6

As I stated the was IMO, opinions by definition cannot be right or wrong. :wink:

No, and I don’t understand that comment. Personally, I don’t think the music issue is racial discrimination. The thing that seemed suspicious to me when he told me was that half the workers were black. I live in the same area. Go into Wendy’s, Burger King, Taco Bell, etc. here and almost all the workers will be white. Black people in general aren’t stupid. They don’t travel quite some distance to get a job with shit wages. The black folks tend to work in fast food restaurants in the black part of the county. :wink:

7

Employees A, B, C and D want to listen to radio station X.

Employee E wants to not listen to radio station X.
Unless there’s a good reason for it to be unacceptable to expect E to listen to X, the majority should prevail. Race has nothing to do with it.

8

I agree that race has nothing to do with this. In fact, if RickJay is correct in his post that the majority of rap music is purchased and listened to by white people, then race isn’t even indirectly an issue. I am actually surprised if it is so that most people into rap music were white. All I know is that this station in question based on the commercials, etc. clearly are targeting a black audience.

My guess is the only possible argument would be the “loud” part. He even states it sometimes in the dining area is almost as loud as the Muzak they play for the customers. The Muzak they play is light rock with some classic R&B.

9

I can’t see that is is “discrminatory” but it must be horrible having to work with fiendishly loud music all the time. :frowning:

10

This should not be a surprise. Think about the math. If 90% of the country is white and 10% black (give or take), then even if 100% of the black population listened to rap, it would take less than 12% of the white population listening to rap for the majority of rap listeners to be white. Thus, Vanilla Ice and Eminem.

It’s also why we’re all forced to listen to Celine Dion in the mall. It’s democracy (or majority tyranny maybe) not discrimination.

11

I think the OP’s friend is totally of track with the whole race thing. What’s that got to do with the price of eggs? You can be white and like rap. Amazingly you can even be black and hate rap! Playing the race card on this is nasty.

What I do know is that there is nothing more soul destroying than being forced to spend every working day listening to music you hate. It truly is torture. Which is a good enough reason to say that music in the workplace should be an all or nothing option. Either all employees agree or there is no music.

If I was the manager that radio would be out of there. It’s an unwelcome distraction and source of conflict.

Either that or it would ‘accidentally’ fall in the deep fat fryer one evening… :smiley:

12

Good point, but I think that what Rick Jay was trying to say is that white people commonly like rap music. If it were the case that 100% of the black people liked rap music, and only 12% of white people did, then arguably playing rap music loudly in a restaurant could be racial discrimination. Imagine a restaurant where there are 20 black people working, and 20 white people working. Now imagine a new manager gets in who hates whites. If he blared rap music loudly, none of the black workers would quit, but since only 12% of the white people like rap music then all but 3 of the white workers who liked rap music would quit.

I did some Google searching, and couldn’t find much in the way of good stats about what percent of white people like rap/hip hop music. However, from one site I found amongst white younger people (the sort of people who tend to work at McDonalds), preferring rap/hip hop music isn’t all that scarce. While young blacks overwhelmingly prefer rap/hip hop, from one site I found about 25% of young white people today do indeed prefer rap/hip hop music. If true, even in an almost white school it would be easy to find lots of kids who liked rap/hip hop.

13

I agree, to a point - there should be a way for the issue to be settled without resorting to managerial dictat or offical complaints. Certainly, the issue at hand appears to be one of bad management rather than discrimination. But do you expect good management at McDonalds?

14

I agree, and that’s what I’ll tell that guy. In fact from what he indicated, the manager in question doesn’t seem to be racist. She’s white, and doesn’t even like rap music. She merely tolerates it because it has made (most) of the workers happy. Pretty much this manager is just in the middle of this.

15

I suppose that’s technically true, but I think you’ll find the number of people willing to describe a manager who underschedules or even fire a persistent troublemaker who is not a team player because of a complaint with no rational basis as “immoral” to be vanishingly small. The manager’s job is precisely to keep the employees happy enough to get all the burgers into the right bags on a decent schedule. If allowing a majority of the employees to listen to a certain radio station contributes to that goal, she is correct to do so and your advice to your friend ought to be to get over it.

16

From what this guy tells me, this manager is a pretty poor one in general. She’s pleasant enough, but rather inept. She actually to try and save money by not changing the oil if the fry vats as often as the standard says. This guy says that the nuggets and fries taste so lousy, on the days when the oil is way out of spec he won’t eat any of the fried products himself. On those days his free employee meal is just a burger and Coke. :wink: He’s repeatedly points out the oil is out of spec, but she just ignores him. Last week she told this guy that sales for December were down 20% of what they were a year ago. His working theory is that the fact the fried products there often taste terrible has something to do with this. :wink:

How would you suggest this be dealt with other than official complaints or managerial dictat? I agree that official complaints here are out of the question. About all that he could accomplish with that is that Human Resources would transfer him to another store. Only problem with that idea is that unless Human Resources did this very quietly, at the new store this guy would come in with a reputation as a troublemaker.

However, I can’t see any way to handle this without managerial dictat of some sort.

17

rfgdxm - from what you’ve said so far, it appears that the manager didn’t tackle the problem directly when it was first raised, but gave (poor) advice to the employee as to what to do, unilaterally. The manager should be on the shop floor talking to individuals, working out if there is a clique and an athmosphere of exclusion, or if there’s other underlying problems. The manager should not have taken the complaint at face value.

But yeah, it doesn’t surprise me that the manager has other shortcomings, too.

18

Ooh that was a stupid error. I just assumed that non-black = white. How incredibly racist of me. Ok 75% of the population is white and 12% black. So more than 16% of white people would have to listen to rap. Still reasonable.

Sure, it’s theoretically possible. But talk about a weak case. If nothing else, it’s a white boss, right? I think this guy just has to learn to get along with these clowns or leave.

19

So it would be OK if the manager allowed some black employees to force out most of the white employees by playing rap music loudly this would be moral? (And let’s be honest, the vast majority of white people wouldn’t work in such an environment.) This guy has worked at this place for a year and a half. He isn’t a new employee who isn’t a team player. This is only a recent issue. If he were a persistant troublemaker, then he’d have been booted out by previous managers long ago. (He says this current head manager is the sixth one since he was first hired. A couple of the previous managers quit because of the cluelessness and unreasonableness of upper management. The manager who he thought was the best was fired for no logical reason. At least he concludes so because sales dropped after she left. He asked her shortly after she was sacked if she missed working there. Her response is that she did miss being around the employees, but was glad as hell to not have to deal with upper management.) According to him, the problem is with some of the black employees who were hired fairly recently. This manager could solve the problem by telling these guys “turn that radio up one more time and its going in the trash.”

20

Good point. The manager definitely didn’t tackle the problem directly. There was no attempt at a resolution. Which might end up being one the guy complaining about wouldn’t like. And this manager agreed with the guy that often there was an issue of the music being played to loud at times. The guy talked to the manager in the employee break room about the issue, with the door closed, and the music still quite noticeable, and she agreed that that is something that shouldn’t be. She most definitely could have warned the employees about that matter.