For our second assignment observing the public, we were to determine the rules of our setting. Set at the Whole Foods Foodcourt on Houston street, John focused on recurrent behavior he saw among occupants. I focused on how the space influenced its occupants. Good work John.
Valentine’s Day 2009
The Whole Foods on Houston is very immersive in quality, unlike any other locations I’ve visited. The second floor has the quality of an exclusive indoor mall, much like Chelsea Market. With its surplus of floor-space there are home goods, as well as apparel, for sale at prices relatively native to the Lower East Side until recent years. The focus of the second level is the food court, consisting of multiple made-to-order stations, with respective seating for said stations, as well as a larger, general dining area.
John noticed the etiquette placard, distributed every few tables. Disguised as a menu card, the tri-fold laminate set standards for mitigating times of frenzy. The rules were specific and concise.
1. Eating customers have seating priority.
2. Limit of one chair per person.
3. No alcohol consumption.
4. No outside food or drink.
The brevity of the placard suggests that there are mutually understood standards for appropriate behavior. It is a reminder that you reside in a very limited iteration of public space. A complete listing of inappropriate behavior is unnecessary.
Each section of the upstairs “mall” had implications of proper behavior. These sections include a café, salad station (hands off), hot food station, and a sushi counter with novel conveyor belt. Both the entrée counter and sushi bar have seating intact. This is more obvious exclusion, in an already privileged setting. Patronizing these services incurs larger cost (all-you-can-eat sushi at $25 per person). The counters, set at eye level, become fixtures of curiosity and benchmark the Whole Foods caste system.
There is an inverse relationship between the cost of participation and designed length of stay. Each space has been constructed for specific use so that customers will identify their intended activity in accordance with the appropriate space. This directly relates to Goffman’s notion of projecting moral character. If I am to apply his rules of a stranger to each space of the food court, I suggest that the spaces’ interior designers have used a similar system to Goffman’s initial definitions. He states:
“…when an individual [space] projects a definition of the situation and thereby makes an implicit or explicit claim to be a [space] of a particular kind, he automatically exerts a moral demand upon the others, obliging theme to value and treat him in the manner that persons of his kind have aright to expect. He also implicitly forgoes all claims to be thing he does not appear to be…”
The spaces’ projection (character) dictates protocol. There is a noticeable difference in turnover rate, social variance and personal activity across the delineated areas. The café and the sushi bar proved the most differential in this respect. The café seating, among the most inclusive areas, has very vague social etiquette, as there are feet up on the tables. It serves as a haven for lingerers of all types: readers, web surfers, day-dreamers and all the like, at his or her own pace. The sushi bar saw mostly couples and occasional lone diners, none who used laptops or read outside material.
The sushi counter kept a swift turnover, as it is surely designed, with two chefs standing not ten feet from the customer. The high chairs that become less comfortable over time were surely intended as such. Upon our departure, the café might be the only section with occupants present during our arrival.
Another theme transpiring during our time at Whole Foods is the Skinner reference “Where to Look,” describing methods for keeping civil inattention when seating across the table from a stranger (138). The only outlets in the main dining area are located on the columns that separate the tables from the windows. The shortness of laptop power cables necessitates perfect strangers to disobey the unspoken rule of leaving at least one empty chair between oneself and another.
There are two obvious strangers, sitting directly across from each other, laptops back to back, at an otherwise empty, fifteen-foot table. There is an understanding that the window seats of the table are also the powered seats. Their actions showed general politeness, one can interpret as their mutual acknowledgement of each other. All while avoiding eye contact.
A red head in her late thirties, covers her mouth while she chews. Sifting through her biodegradable container for the next nugget of salad bar gold. The young man in his Ecko sweatshirt tends to a proper steep, dunking the bronze teabag with his plastic fork. I’m sure they’ve mastered the peripheral glance over laptop, but their LCD shields keep them from ever meeting eyes.