That’s bullshit, man (or, observations at the exchange counter)
I’m taking a research methodology course for my master’s program in educational technology.
One of the requirements was to do a ethnographical study of some common setting. I chose the exchange counter at Future Shop, a major Canadian electronics retailer.
Ethnography is challenging!
I decided to go to Future Shop and observe the returns and exchanges counter. Here are my notes - hastily scrawled between visits by suspicious sales staff!
They’re punctuated by my hasty attempt at categorization while in the store … and are pretty raw, pretty much straight from my notebook.
1. Scene
Future Shop in Abbotsford. Big store, jammed with electronics, computers, media, appliances, etc.Near the front entrance of the store there’s a long counter with several electronic cash registers on it. Service staff face the entrance; clients walk up to them. The cash register screens are visible by service staff only; not clients.
Clients enter a line at a sign. There’s a roped-off section suggesting where the line-up should be. When a cashier is free, people move forward.
Service staff have a fairly informal uniform - black shirt, tan pants, with a security ID tag around the neck. Clients are widely varied in dress from jogging pants to jeans to suits.
2. Bearded man
A bearded Caucasian 40-ish man steps up to the counter. He’s got a boxed product and a variety of papers - receipt, and some bigger sheet of paper. Phones are ringing. The PA system repeatedly pages various people in various departments. He talks to the cashier; there seems to be an impasse. He leaves with his papers and box.3. Bald man
An 60-ish Caucasian man steps up to the counter. Strained expression on his face. Cashier (20-ish, female, short, dark-haired, Indo-Canadian) checks his receipt, checks his box, asks questions, taps data into her cash register. I hear him say “whatever.”There’s little eye contact between him and the cashier. He has on hand on his hip, one hand on the counter.
She scans his credit card, seems to be finishing up. She cracks a joke, pointing at some place in the store. I don’t hear her words. He laughs.
She continues tapping on the cash register. She smiles again, saying another joke or anecdote. He smiles. The register spits out more paper for the client’s signature. He signs.
4. Self-assured man
My attention is captured by a self-assured Caucasian man in his early 30’s. Suit, tie, dress shoes. Goatee. Short, slim. Walks up to a 30-ish couple in the line-up with a Guitar Hero 3 box in hand. “That’s the wrong music game,” he says, loudly. “You should get _____” (can’t hear the name.) They smile, nod, answer shortly and quietly.5. Finished
Meanwhile, the bald man finished, and is walking away.6. 2 young guys
Two young Indo-Canadian guys in jogging suits and white runners step up to the counter. They say something. Cashier says something … I catch “buy something else.” They leave the counter, walk past me into the main section of the store. One says while passing “that’s bullshit, man.”7. Self-assured man #2
The self-assured guy steps up to a recently opened position on the exchanges counter. He’s loud - I can hear him half-way across the store, although I can’t make out every word. He makes eye contact, unlike some others, and says confidently “I need to exchange _____ for _____” (couldn’t hear the names of the products).8. 30-ish couple
Meanwhile, the 30-ish Caucasian couple step up to the other station. He puts the Guitar Hero 3 box on the counter, talks to the cashier. She opens the box, checks the product, and checks his receipt. I hear a few words she says: “what happened?” They seem to want to check if the guitar is still working.The couple does not make much eye contact with the cashier. The stand slightly turned towards each other, talking very quietly.
The guitar inspection seems over - the cashier taps on her machine and and it produces a 3-foot long receipt. He signs it, and she hands over cash. Must have been an original cash transaction.
9. Self-assured man #3
He’s just finishing up with the cashier. Is still loud and somewhat perfunctory: “Thank you very much and have a good day.” He turns, walks away with his newly exchanged-for product, and walk out the door. The alarm sounds … he slows, half-turns, then continues walking out. No Future Shop employees do anything.10. 2 young guys #2
The two young guys are back, with some small product in a plastic case. I hear the word “here” as they plunk it on the counter. One faces the cashier as she processes the exchange, the other faces his buddy. Both make little eye contact with the cashier.The transaction is over quickly. They sign the receipt and walk out. The alarm goes off again - they continue walking out. No-one does anything.
11. Diffident woman
A Caucasian middle-aged woman sidles up to the counter, but stays a couple of feet away. After a minute or two, the cashier looks up, speaks, and the woman walks closer. They start talking.12. End.
My time is up. I’ve been approached 4 or 5 times by Future Shop staff with slowly increasing levels of interest. Maybe they think I’m secret-shopping them, or work for a competitor. Time to pack up and get out.. . .
. . .This was very fun and very challenging.
I really felt a need for a video camera to capture information that could then be analyzed in depth later … I really felt I was missing so much detail that I wanted to capture.
Eating mud to survive
This kills me. Hungry Haitians are eating mud in an attempt to survive:
With food prices rising, Haiti’s poorest can’t afford even a daily plate of rice, and some take desperate measures to fill their bellies. Charlene, 16 with a 1-month-old son, has come to rely on a traditional Haitian remedy for hunger pangs: cookies made of dried yellow dirt from the country’s central plateau.
The mud has long been prized by pregnant women and children here as an antacid and source of calcium. But in places like Cite Soleil, the oceanside slum where Charlene shares a two-room house with her baby, five siblings and two unemployed parents, cookies made of dirt, salt and vegetable shortening have become a regular meal.
“When my mother does not cook anything, I have to eat them three times a day,” Charlene said. Her baby, named Woodson, lay still across her lap, looking even thinner than the slim 6 pounds 3 ounces he weighed at birth.
Of course it’s probably not a good idea to have 5 kids if you can’t support them, of course it’s probably not a good idea to have a baby when 16 and single, of course there are larger things going on in the economy and government of Haiti that lead to some having much and most having nothing.
But.
It ought to offend every sensibility all of us have that in 2008 people are reduced to eating mud in a attempt to survive. It’s not right. And if we can, we ought to help.
Here’s a few ways we can:
I recommend the last one, Meds and Food for Kids, for a couple of reasons:
- they target kids
- they have a simple nutritional supplement that doesn’t require special care, handling, or cooking
- they manufacture what they need in Haiti, benefiting the local economy
- they work with local Haitians to supply the services, rather than maintaining a big staff of ex-pats in-country
- they have a great success rate
- they’re easy to donate to via JustGive
7 spiritual laws of success
Tina at ThinkSimpleNow posted recently on 7 spiritual laws of success. I responded, and as I sometimes do, am cross-posting my response here …
Nice post. A couple of thoughts that struck me as I saw a few things:
“Success is the ability to fulfill your desires with effortless ease.“
- Deepak ChopraThis really strongly contrasts with John Wooden’s definition of success:
“Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best you are capable of becoming.”
Personally, I think the effortless ease part is shallow nonsense. I acknowledge that we too often needlessly complicate our lives, our relationships, and many other things … but things that are worth having are not easy. Anyone over the age of 35 who has done some hard thinking in life can attest to that. And in fact in your case it took a fairly intense study series and commitment of time, energy, and focus.
. . .
. . .One thing that I wonder about:
“Part of writing this post serves as a reminder to myself, of what’s most important: my wellbeing. … and how I need to create the time to work on me. Only when I’m well, can I be of service and help to others.”
I’m glad you added the second sentence. But what’s most important is very often NOT my own wellbeing, but the wellbeing of others or doing what is right, not just what is best for me. That’s the hard part about doing the right thing … it’s not always in your own immediate best interest.
The funny thing is that doing what is right, and putting others first at least part of the time is much more likely to result in wellbeing for yourself than an internal “me” focus.
That’s the “secret” of success … it’s a byproduct, not a goal in itself.
Outrageous cost of text messages
There’s a reason why SMS is a hundred billion dollar industry … and it’s simply that phones companies are unbelievably greedy.
Note: the three examples cited are, respectively: from your internet service provider via high-speed modem, over standard text messaging systems, and snail mail via the United States Postal Service. All are assuming that data is transmitted digitally (in the case of the snail mail, the bits are written on paper.)
COSTS OF TRANSFERING 2,560 MP3s:
TCP/IP: $1
TCP/SMS: $61,356,851.20
USPS: $307,072.00 (Bits written out on paper)So getting a SMS delivered is bit for bit 200x more expensive than getting a message hand delivered to your doorstep anywhere in the United States.
What exactly justifies making SMS messages sixty one million times more expensive than ISP data and 200x more expensive than TCP/USPS? How come technology, communication, and infrastructure is getting cheaper while the costs of SMS messages are increasing exponentially? My theory: SMS messages are transfered over air made of solid gold.
Full article here. Well worth the read!
(I originally saw this at Slashdot. As noted at Digg, here seems to be a technical issue with that page - if you don’t see the article at that link, try the home page. It should be the top story there for a while.)
Gabrielle, 11: capitalist
My 11-year-old daughter Gabrielle has gone into business designing and selling t-shirts.
Her first creation is far too cool for words:
Available at our Cafepress store, naturally …
[ update February 9 ]
Here’s Gabrielle’s latest - for babies:
Flickr is down
It’s been ages since the latest outage, but yes, Flickr is down right now.
Naturally it’s right after I come back from a nature walk by the Fraser River. I’ve never, ever seen it so calm as I saw it today … hardly a ripple anywhere. The biggest disturbance on the surface of the water was caused by a solitary seagull.
Unbelievable. I’ve never seen a river so calm - as calm as a mountain lake sheltered by surrounding peaks on a calm day.
[ update: Flickr's back up, and here's one of the photos ]
[ and another ]
[ and yet one more ]
Deconstructionist question
For my current course in my master’s program, I’ve been looking a number of different theoretical perspectives from which educational research can be conducted.
The prof asked us to come up with research questions from each. As I was doing so, I was thinking of web 2.0 technologies like those listed under the Virtual Me header at right … web services that allow anyone to record personal information, history, events, thoughts, experiences. Here’s my question for deconstructionism:
How does recording personal history and artifacts - which necessarily presents a static, freeze-frame version of the self - subvert the concept of identity by representing a dynamic, mutable substance as a stable, unchanging essence?
A good deconstructionist question should be subversive of itself … should deconstruct itself and its own language just as much if not more than whatever concept it purports to analyze.
Coming up with that was fun.
If Apple’s website doesn’t work on Safari, what will …
You would think that Apple would ensure that it’s website works on Safari, the browser Apple created. So why is it that 9 times out of 10, when I go to check out the new MacBook Air commercial, it doesn’t play?
(And yes, I’m as up to date as 10.4 gets: Mac OS X 10.4.11, Safari version 3.0.4, latest version of QuickTime, high-speed connection to the internet, etc. etc.)
Odd.
Even odder that: occasionally, it does.
Pop-unders: thanks but no thanks
If I ever want to kill any readership of Sparkplug 9, I know exactly how to do it. I’ve received written instructions in the mail.
Email, actually. I recently received one from Kim Tompkins, a “junior media buyer” at Red McCombs Media. It’s a proposal any self-respecting blogger would swiftly upchuck at:
Hi there,
I am a Media Buyer with Red McCombs Media. I am contacting you today because we are looking to place some 800×600 small business related pop-unders. I can give these pop-unders to you at a $2.50cpm, targeted to US visitors.
These pop-unders only contain content relating to small business and will not rotate in anything inappropriate, pornographic, etc. Please let me know if you are interested at your earliest convenience! We would love to get you set up as a publisher immediately! If you could just get back to me with how many impressions per day we can expect from your site we can move forward from there. Please let me know if you have any questions!
If you would like to learn more about our company please feel free to visit our website http://www.redmccombsmedia.com. Look forward to hearing back from you and hope we are able to get something started!
Thanks!
Nothing good starts with “hi there.” And no, I have no intention of putting pop-unders on my site. $2.50 per thousand is a very small amount for my integrity.
I’ll stick with Text Links Ads.
Danah Boyd via Scoble
The world is obviously coming to an end when a video blogger like Scoble is at Davos live-broadcasting everyone he meets. Here’s Danah Boyd, who has interesting things to say about teens, technology, and social networking:
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About
Sparkplug 9 is John Koetsier's blog on life, the universe, and everything,
but mostly the stuff you see big in the tags to the left.
Welcome, enjoy, buy the T-shirt, take a picture, tell your friends. -
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