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Sonos rage

You know the feeling: you’re trying to work, but the resident hipster in charge of the office playlist is blasting out noise and telling you it’s called “grime”. Well, it certainly sounds grimy to you and, more to the point, it’s giving you a migraine. Would they mind turning it down, by which you mean off, you inquire politely? “No can do,” comes the answer. “You’re not allowed to skip tracks on the playlist.”

Either you must insert earplugs if you wish to concentrate, or unleash an outburst of Sonos rage. Named after the manufacturer of speakers and playlist software popular in offices, this is much like road rage, except it has nothing to do with roads and everything to do with the tensions that build when workers are unhappy with the choice of background music playing while they toil.

If you catch someone trying to skip the Celine Dion track in the hope you won’t notice, they’re probably suffering from it.

But isn’t this inevitable in an age when employees are increasingly being treated – or subjected – to a barrage of tunes in the workplace? It may sound counter-revolutionary, but wouldn’t it be simpler to just turn off the music, at least some of the time, and embrace the golden silence?

We all have our musical differences, and since headphone-wearing colleagues cocooned in their bubble are as irritating as those who foist their tastes upon others, the answer may lie in a puritanical No Music Zone. This is work, for heaven’s sake, not Glastonbury.