How May I Help You?

AM+DG

Ateneo de Manila University

How may I help you?

Breaching Project Written Report

Grace Millora, Geoff Que, Daniel Scarlata, Sinjin Taloma, Basille Uy, Justin Yu

SA 21 -G

Ms. Emily Roque

February 24, 2015

Part 1: What norm did you violate?

• People dressed in a specific manner are there to serve a purpose often attributed to their specific dress code.

• The norm is that store clerks are there to serve and help the customers of their respective stores. Some of their other tasks are to fix the items such as books in bookstores and toys in a toy stores so that the areas will look neat and presentable. This is now a norm because if people dress like an employee of a store, it is always assumed that they will help us and will automatically offer us assistance when in need. Another thing about this norm is when we do not leave things in their proper place, we are used to them placing these items in their proper locations, so customers have developed the habit to leave the things which they realized that they didn’t want to buy or don’t want in the wrong place. Other examples would be students which have a dress code set by the school rules that they are expected to follow rules. The same goes with workers who dress in such a way that when their clothes get dirty, they wouldn’t mind it. Because this is such a common judgement on the people we see dressing up in such a manner, we decided to break this norm.

Part 2: Describe the breaching experiment in detail. What was the activity? Where did you do it?

• The experiment was for our group members to act like store clerks in shops in a mall.  The objective was to dress up like a store clerk and approach the customers asking them if they need help and giving them advice on the best, opening doors for them and greeting them with a smile, and doing other activities that a store clerk would usually do. We carefully studied our process and operation and how we will go about doing the experiment. It was important that we get prepared to face the different reactions of everyone especially those who will have negative reactions toward our actions. Most of the experiment was done in Eastwood Mall in different shops like DIY Shop, Gap, Fully Booked and Starbucks. We chose this certain mall because it gives a higher chance to interact with more people from higher social classes while still being able to interact with some of those from the lower classes as compared to the other malls near Ateneo. This means that doing things that are out of the norm are more rejected and looked upon with more disdain.

Part 3: 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?

• Majority of the people seemed to be confused with what we were doing. Although they had a clue Scarly and Justin were pretending to be a store clerks, they did not know the reason why. There were some who looked embarrassed and awkward and some were politely smiling, like what we have expected, while trying to shoo Scarly away from them. We think the latter reaction is normal since a number of people tend to feel really awkward when a sales clerk tries to approach them, so they would just smile to lessen the awkwardness. We were fortunate enough that no customers got offended. However after the experiment, the manager of a clothing store approached us and told us we need to have a permit to conduct such activity. Despite of explaining the requirements, our intentions, and the confidentiality of the information, they asked us not to continue the experiment in their store. A similar instance happened in a coffee shop wherein the guard approached Scarly, explained to him about the permit and politely asked him to leave. Based on the reactions of the customers and staff, the deviant act reaffirmed the existing norm on store clerks. Even though no one approached Scarly, customers would glance at him since his attire was similar to the salesmen in a hardware. On the other hand, when Basille tried to stand in a clothing store, no one approached nor glanced at her. It is possible that her attire affected the result since she was wearing a more casual clothing.

Part 4: 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 & poor), values/beliefs of institutions (religion, family, peer group, etc.).

Social Class

• The customers would profile the norm-breaker first depending on what he was wearing. According to observations made during the experiment, customers who were wearing more casual clothes and seemed to be part of lower social classes were more responsive and eager to receive help from our norm-breaker. The people who looked as if they were part of the higher social classes were more reserved and would rather be left alone instead of asking for assistance. This is a form of Structural Functionalism because the lower classes are eager to accept help from someone who has more knowledge on the product than they do, while those in higher social classes would be hesitant to get assistance from someone they find “inferior” to them.

• But then again, this observation may not be as reliable as others since our basis of categorizing the customers by social class is only done via superficial means, which would be their clothing.

Age  

• Younger people also tend to be more open with accepting help from the norm-breakers than the elderly. Compared to the latter, the younger customers seemed to be more trusting of the assistance provided by the norm-breaker. The elderly, however, did not seem to respond to the help given to them at all. Younger people are also more open to suggestions, willing to accept the opinions of people around them as they make decisions while the more aged people would rather be left alone to make decisions for themselves. An example for this would be in DIY Shop, wherein the younger customers willingly accepted assistance from our norm-breaker, whereas the middle-aged clearly did not want our help.

• A different way of seeing through this perspective would be the physical assistance offered by our norm-breaker. When doing physical tasks such as opening doors, reaching for items, and looking for better/newer stock of a certain product, we have observed the older people tend to appreciate this kind of assistance more than the more youthful customers. This maybe due to their bodies not being as vigor as they used to be, so the more mature customers would rather have somebody else do all the manual work for them.

Expertise

• Another theme that we have observed was that of the customer’s knowledge regarding the products that they are looking for. The relationship between the customer’s expertise with the said products and their willingness to accept opinions from our norm-breaker are directly proportional. If a customer knows more about the product, for example, a construction worker who went to the DIY Shop to look for tools did not even consider the opinions that our norm-breaker was trying to give him since he already knew what he was looking for. A mother, however, who also went to the DIY shop with nothing but a list of things to buy, gladly accepted the opinions provided by our norm-breaker, since she was only following a list and really had no specialized knowledge on the products themselves.

Part 5: 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? (Answered by Scarly)

• At first it was scary since we had knowledge that doing this experiment and videotaping is not allowed by the management of the mall. At first I was hesitant in approaching people in the stores because there were employees all around the store that would reprimand me if they catch me in the act. It was difficult to videotape anything because employees would always check on all customers. I did however got the hang of it and I became comfortable in breaking the norm.

• While doing the experiment, it was hard to make up things to tell the customers because I had the feeling that they would catch me lying. Those who dismissed me actually made me feel better since I wouldn’t have a hard time in trying to project myself as someone else. Whenever I was entertaining a customer, there was the fear of them asking questions which I would not be able to answer.

• There was always the lingering feeling that I was going to get caught and I will be in trouble because of breaking this norm. Eventually, it did happen as a guard from Starbucks reprimanded me and asked me to stop what I was doing. I was scared at this point because I thought that I would get into serious trouble but it turned out that he just wanted me to leave. This discouraged the group from continuing the experiment since we knew that we would get into bigger trouble.

Part 6: Other observations and analysis that you may have on the activity and on deviance in general

• This activity required a lot of courage. First of all, we had to have guts to be able to do this because it requires us to break a norm. Breaking a norm is very difficult because it is already embedded in the culture of the people around us. In this situation, we had to break the norm of being a store clerk even if we weren’t really working there. There was the risk of being yelled at or even apprehended by the authorities so it was very terrifying for us to do it. There was also the anxiety of working around strangers knowing that we weren’t supposed to be there doing these certain activities. We had to give up our pride in order to be able to act and perform the experiment.

• Another thing is the reactions of the people around us. They didn’t really notice the fact that we were doing an experiment and they just thought that we were just fooling around with the employees so they gave us a bad look. Because of this, we felt guilty about having to do this and tried to switch stores whenever this happened.

• About deviance, we thought at first that it would be fun to be able to do such things with a purpose which was to be able to gather results for class. But when it came down do actually doing the breaching of the norm, we all felt awkward and we did not want to do it. Luckily we mustered up the courage to actually do it and we had the expected results.

• In general, it is hard to break a norm because it forces conflict between the general population and the people who are actually trying to break the norm. In this experiment, some of the people actually react to the actual breaking of the norm and some just watch and observe what is actually happening. Maybe for them, it is some way to satisfy their curiosity and to fulfil their imagination of what it looks like if it were really to happen.