Overall Time: 7 pm - 10 pm
Left side of paper: Observations = "-"
Right side of paper: Thought and questions = "*"
Location: Dining Room
Time: 7 pm - 830 pm
-Dinner rush is starting up
*I'm happy I'm not working tonight.
-People come in the doors, mostly the north door. They look cold, blowing into their hands trying to recover from the cold winter night. They scan the menu looking for something to eat.
*These are the lazy people who either can't cook or don't want to cook.
-They stomp their feet on the tile floor rather then on the floor mats in the vestibules.
*Assholes, an employee will have to clean that up later. This makes closing the store take longer.
-People order food and the cashier takes their money, then gets their food together on the tray. A little girl yells "mommy i want this one!" as she points to a toy in the display case.
*The mom is looking kinda edgy, that kid better cool it.
-People in the dining room talk. laugh, and eat.
*I'll just observe and try not to eavesdrop.
-After completing their meals, the groups throw away their trash.
*These are good people, some people believe it is the employees job to take care of their trash.
-Some hooligans throw away their trash... along with the trays.
*I should go chase them down... i could take um.
-A man walks in to use the bathroom. He then leaves without ordering anything.
*Moocher...
Location: Kitchen/ Back room
Time: 8:30 pm - 10 pm
-Things seem to be slowing down. The sandwich maker is restocking his station.
*Making sandwiches, the one thing i never really do.
-Grill operator is cleaning the meat staging area. He is getting ready to "cook to order".
*He's late, i would have done that a half hour ago.
-Same process is repeated: person takes order over head set, customer pulls up to 1st window, employee takes money, people in the kitchen make the food as the customer is ordering it making it to the customers specifications.
*Wow, i need a new job...
-Food is handed out the window. The whole process takes and average of 100 secs.
*It better be an average of 100 secs, otherwise the manger will wig out.
-Cashier working up front moves out into the dining room to start cleaning it. This is so the dining room is ready to be closed at 10 pm.
*I'm happy I'm not working tonight, otherwise i would be the one out there cleaning the dining room.
-Cashier turns off lights in dinning room, the manger goes outside to lock the doors into the dining room.
*The employees only have 2 hours left until they get to close the whole store!!!
3 comments:
I think that your observations were interesting and made a lot of good insights but I felt you definitely were an insider looking in at the community and perhaps taking a step back may help your research.
This was a lot of fun to read, Adam!
I like how you've organized your field notes in this post, first of all. It's really cool to read your thoughts as they apply to each observation you make.
Lots of interesting observations and questions/thoughts. You've done a great job capturing how customers in restaurants don't often think of the same things that employees do...that customers don't think about where they are kicking off the snow from their shoes, or throwing away the trays. And yet you've seemed to observed a "range of respect;" some customers are more aware of their actions than others. This aspect of customer respect might be something interesting to look at more, especially as you compare fast food to casual dining (perhaps customers have different kinds of respect, or lack there of, in these two different kinds of eating establishments).
You definitely seem to have observed this from the viewpoint of an employee, and it would be difficult to do otherwise since that is where you are "coming from." I would suggest, however, that you try and defamiliarize yourself even more while doing these observations. I really enjoy reading your thoughts about these customers (your reflections are a bit "smart-ass," which is a kind of humor I can truly appreciate). But that being said, you will need to think about the way you present your observations in your LE2 - and that might not involve some of the thoughts you've written down in this CRJ. Especially in a research essay, you want to be careful not to come off as judgmental. Since part of LE2 is to use your observations as evidence, you want your observations to have plenty of objectivity to them in order to provide authentic research evidence. In some of the observations you have here, as fun as they are to read, you do sound like you have a lot of opinions, and it doesn't always seem as objective as it could. You might try and ask more questions in your next observations, especially questions about the "trends" you are hopefully noticing. I don't want you to stop making notes about the thoughts you have, because that's part of the fun, but in addition to your thoughts and commentary, try to focus on asking a lot of objective questions about what you are seeing/hearing, and that might help you combine your subjectivity with objectivity.
Full credit
Adam,
I think you put a lot of effort into this. When you observe you don't just watch and type what you see...I believe you take the time to really analize and obsorb everything. It took a lot time to do what you have done.
Truly, Amanda Elizabeth
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