What norm did you violate?
One norm we violated is ordering food that is not on the menu. Customers are always conscious of what they order since the menu is readily available for them to look at. Moreover, the purpose of the menu is that it serves as a guide for customers in ordering the food that is available in the restaurant. So ordering something that is not in the menu is considered “weird” by the society.
Describe the breaching experiment in detail. What was the activity? Where did you do it?
Our breaching is experiment is about going to a certain fast food chains and ordering food that is definitely not on their menu or at least call the food something that sounds like a kind of food of their competitor. First, we went to McDonald's. One of us ordered foods that only Jollibee, their competitor, serves like Macaroni Soup, Burger Steak, Jolly hotdog. Then, we went to Jollibee. Like what we did in McDonald’s, we ordered in Jollibee the kinds of food that were only served by their competitor, McDonalds. We ordered McSpicy Burger, Big Mac and McFlurry for dessert. Then, we went to KFC and ordered random kinds of food that we know KFC doesn’t serve; to an extent we even ordered milktea in KFC.
What were the different reactions of the people? List all possible reactions you observed. Why do you think they reacted this way? What caused these reactions? Did the deviant act reaffirm/reinforce the existing norms based on these reactions?
The first reaction we received made us feel more nervous. The cashier of McDonald’s ,where we first attempted this activity, seemed to be pissed off or unhappy, maybe it’s because it’s not her day. She did not react even after our explanation of the activity. Also, she just had a straight face. Our second attempt was in Jollibee. The cashier had a better reaction, saying it was okay and he was still smiling even after the explanation of our activity. He reacted this way maybe because it’s the policy of the company and, also, he is in the mood that day. The third attempt ,in KFC, even had a more positive reaction. The cashier was also smiling. Also, after the explanation, we asked her how she found her customer ,our groupmate. She responded that at first, she found it normal since the first ones our groupmate ordered was somehow similar to their menu, however, she found it funny that her customer ordered “milk tea.”
Aside from the norms, what sociological themes are at play for people to react in a certain way? Is it a function of gender (gender norms, roles), social class (norms of the rich & the poor), values/beliefs of institutions (religion, family, peer group, etc.).
One sociological theme is the function of gender. How men and women perceive things differently. In our experiment we noticed how some men took their work less seriously than women. The Jollibee employee just smiled and respectfully that they don’t serve that specific kind of food, when we ordered food that is not part of the fastfood restaurant. The Mcdo and KFC employee, on the other hand, responded differently. The Mcdo employee looked at us in a straight face but still answered respectfully,when we ordered food that is not part of the fastfood restaurant. The KFC employee didn’t gave us a straight face ,when did the breaching experiment, but she suggested alternative foods that are part of the KFC menu so that she place an order and serve us food. Another sociological theme is the stress level of the people. Since we did the breaching report in an fastfood restaurant, employees are expected to work fast and would result to them working under pressure and alot of stress. So in our breaching experiment we can see that the employee working at Mcdo, tend to be not that patient because we did our experiment around 12.30 where alot of people are going to restaurants to eat lunch. We did the breaching experiment on the Jollibee employee around 2.30, where most of the people are already at work or studying at school, thus resulting him having a pleasing attitude after we told him we did a breaching experiment on him.
How did you feel when you did this experiment? How does it feel to deviate from the norms? Were you hesitant to do the activity?
Before doing the breaching activity, all of us felt uneasy and nervous. We didn’t know how to start off with our experiment. So we stood in front of McDonald’s, our first stop, and kept asking ourselves the same questions over and over again; like kids arguing on the streets. But finally after much deliberation, we had reached a point of agreement and made ourselves a “plan of action”. Then again, having a plan didn’t really make the situation less scary or nerve wrecking. We still had to go in front of the counter and order stuff that their chain obviously didn’t have, and so we did.
Our group did this 3 times in total. The first one which was held in Mcdonalds was terrifying. The girl on the counter was very “mataray” and seemed very serious with her work. This made us even more nervous going into our second attempt in the experiment. However, the guy on the counter was really jolly and pleasant, so we felt somewhat confident with the second try and had some fun doing it aswell. Lastly, on our visit to KFC, again we felt nervous. The place was packed and we were afraid that the ladies on the counter felt stressed and would give us an unpleasant reaction. But we assumed wrong, they were very accomodating and even suggested stuff in their menu.
To be honest, our group felt nervous and scared all throughout the experiment. We were good boys and we would never do stuff that would deviate from the norms. But then again, it also felt somewhat cool whenever we received good responses from the ates and kuyas in front of the counter.
Other observations and analysis that you may have on the activity and on deviance in general.
Based on this activity, we have observed that people have different reactions to deviance. While some are accepting of it and welcome it with open arms, others close themselves off to things that in their eyes are not “right” or “normal”. We have also observed that people react to deviance depending on how it was done, some people find it insulting, others see it as a funny thing and but still try to direct the situation back to normal.
Experiment made by F5 (Chan, Ong, Sy Lato, Turano, Yumang)
Video by F5 Productions
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