A McDonald’s outlet in Christchurch, Dorset, is set to play classical music from its speakers in the hope of scaring away aggressive customers.
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The outlet, which is in the process of applying for a license to stay open all night long, is insistent that the works of Beethoven, Bach, Brahms and co. will help to ensure that, even if their opening hours are anti-social, their customers are not. This is a similar measure to that already taken at various underground train stations across London in an attempt to reduce rates of crime. Incidentally, not all 65 of the stations that play music today do so because they had trouble with anti-social behaviour, some just liked the idea.
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Speaking at a sub-committee meeting at Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole council, a lawyer for McDonald’s said: ‘We have worked out — and it is quite a horrific fact to acknowledge — that if people are being rude inside a restaurant or unfriendly you just play classical music. It is a really sad statement to say that classical music tends to scare people away. That and just turning off the free internet. These are small measures that relate to our experience and ensure that we don’t have anti-social behaviour.’
The company has already used classical music at other outlets and it has been reported that a drop in crime rate at the Shepherd’s Bush branch was due to the use of music. 