Enough time has passed since leaving Insomniac that I feel safe sharing the story of both my greatest triumph and secret shame. A thread. CW: bathrooms

Early 2016 brought an unexpected email from HR - we were getting music in the bathrooms. A controversial plan, and factions formed between music lovers and those who wanted them to remain silent.

HR weathered the typical complaining. I wasn't crazy about the change (can't y'all just wear headphones?) but wasn't particularly worked up either. They eventually settled on classical-ish Ratchet and Clank playlist.

Now, especially during summer, I got in early and was often the first person in. On one such morning I noticed the speaker had a smart card slot. Being of elevated mirth, I conceived the plan to replace the music.

I wanted something plausible but unlikely. Ultimately I settled on 12 hours of the Soviet-era composer, [Shostakovich]( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitri_Shostakovich).

Shostakovich was a genius, sure, but to the uninitiated his music kind of sounds like it was made out of every combination of notes that aren't chords. After making the switch, I sat back and waited for hilarity to ensue.

And... nothing. Apart from one overheard incident in the bathroom ("what the... FUCK?"), there were no apparent hijinks. Did I underestimate my coworkers? Was Shostakovich too subtle?

But, a couple of days later, HR sent another email - the music had been removed. They had received an unprecedented amount of complaining, which resulted in the rare HR reversal.

The thing is... I had only replaced the music in the men's restroom. But all of the people in HR who received the complaints were women. They must have thought this torrent of complaining was about their *original playlist*.

The disconnect between folks thinking the Shostakovich auditory assault was sanctioned by HR and HR thinking that folks were incensed by vanilla, inoffensive Ratchet and Clank scores... just too good.

I had committed the perfect crime and the only downside was that I couldn't tell anyone. Things had gone too far to confess. Until today.