Sociology > Ethnography

For the purpose of doing the ethnographic research I chose the restaurant I work in. I’m one of the four waiters, and been there for almost a year. This is the place I spend most of my time besides my home. I meet hundreds of customers every week, so this seems like a perfect spot to watch people. The only general conclusion I came to is that everyone behaves in a certain way according to their expectation of the place. I think that this restaurant is a perfect spot, not only because I can watch how people behave, but also because I’m too, part of the whole scene. I, being their waitress, have to constantly interact with them, this way I can get a much closer view of what is going on.

There is of course a major distinction between the customers and the employees of the place, and it’s interesting to analyze both groups. I think it will be easier to understand their actions and motives if we know where this restaurant is located, what the demographic characters of its patrons are, and what they think about the place. Everybody has a different expectation as to what they look for in an eatery. Some people want to have a gourmet experience, others just want to grab a quick bite with their children, while there are those who just want to sit at the bar and have a few drinks while the bartender entertains them.

The restaurant is called Aurora, serves Northern Italian food, and is located in Rye, Westchester. Rye is a relatively chic neighborhood in Lower Westchester, inhabited mostly by middle and upper class people. Mostly families, I’d say with one to three kids, but also many young couples planning to establish families live around here. Interestingly enough, I met a number of people who just recently moved out here from New York City, thinking that this will be the ideal place to raise their future children. The ethnicity of our patrons varies greatly as well. Just recently I had a table with a young couple from Lebanon. We also have Asians, South Americans, Europeans, and of course many Americans with a different ethnic background. They all have different dining customs. I know that when I have a table with Asian people, only one person will order for the whole family, and they will all eat from the same plates sharing whatever they have on the table. And this is the case in almost every single instance, no matter how long they’ve been in this country. Germans tend to drink a lot of alcohol compared to others, and British people are more likely to start a conversation with employees.

We are open both for lunch and dinner, which I think is important in terms of the differences between the lunch and dinner crowd. Just as an example, it’s mostly stay home moms, people in suit from nearby businesses, or older couples who come in for lunch. Business people just order something light and quick and drink ice tea or diet coke. Older couples order similarly, but they tend to stay longer. I guess they have nowhere to rush anymore. Stay home moms sometimes order a glass of wine with their two course launches, and are able to chat for hours.

There is one thing that I don’t think our customers realize. And this is the fact that us, waiters, work for tips, so we all know that we have to put on different masks according to what kind of behavior a particular table expects from us. Some people are friendlier than others, and come in not only to eat, but to socialize as well. Especially people at the bar are like this. We actually make friends with them, gossip a little, and greet each other on the street. Others treat us like we are only there to serve them, and that’s all we should do. So everybody acts differently, which I think have to do with a lot of variable, such as their social status, wealth, ethnicity, education, etc. Some would think that wealthier people are not as nice as others, but this alone is not true. It would be silly to say this; however some of my colleagues are convinced that it is true. It’s just a general thing; some people are nicer and more considerate than others.

When I started doing this assignment, I didn’t really know where to start, so I looked at the first thing people do when coming into the restaurant. And that is standing in the door waiting for somebody to seat them. They know that they can’t just go to a table they like and seat down. By the way, in other countries, for example in Hungary, people who go to restaurants can just pick a table they like and seat themselves. I noticed that there is a few different kind of behavior that people exert while waiting.

The first and most common group of people just stand in the door, quietly and patiently, waiting for us to notice them. Most often it’s the manager who greets the customers, and he’s the one who shows them to their tables as well. So sometimes people have to wait a few seconds, and this first group I’m talking about is the patient group. Well of course on a Saturday night even these people can loose their temper, but then others will stare at them, and sometimes this is enough for them to stop acting crazy.

The other group of people is the ones who need immediate attention. They either just grab a menu and start studying it making sure that one of us will notice them as soon as possible. Funnily enough, these people usually pick out a wine list that are on top, and when I go to them I just take it out of their hands, saying that I don’t think this is the menu you wanted to see, and hopefully they will feel embarrassed about their impatient actions.

And lastly the people who can’t even wait one minute for someone to go to them, or the ones who realize they’re in the wrong place (there are a couple of other restaurants on the street). So the most impatient ones storm out, leaving every one else wondering, what happened to them. Since this is an Italian restaurant, we all like to take our times, and whoever doesn’t realize this, well, better just leave. Another interesting thing is that those people, who realize they came to the wrong restaurant, usually simply just get up and leave. Sometimes they even order drinks to, and just when they start looking at the menu realize that this isn’t the place they supposed to be. I’ll never understand why they can’t just stay. Instead, feeling though somewhat embarrassed, they choose to apologize and leave. Some people are just walking on the street and they notice us, since we’re a fairly new restaurant. They just ask to look at the menu, and perhaps they make a reservation. By the way, some folks go crazy with reservations. I get calls sometimes from customers who want to make reservations for a month ahead for two of them for launch. I meant if they’ve ever been here they know that first of all, launch is not that busy, secondly that for two people it’s not so hard to find a table even when the place is full. I guess every aspect of their lives must be organized like crazy.

So this was one interesting aspect of our customers’ behavior. We, in the business will know just by noticing little details, like for example how they enter the place, how these people will act and interact with us, and with each other. Sometimes they don’t even say “Hi”, let alone “How are you?” We, waiters sometimes start a quiet fight over who takes the table with the nasty people. After giving an overall view of our patrons, in the followings I’d like to explain how I think people perceive the social hierarchy within our organization.

Well, of course on the top is the restaurant’s owner or owners. Some customers are “privileged” enough to know him, some say they’re friends of him, so, of course they request some special kind of treatment. They’re usually the ones to stay for the longest time, even when they see we’re all ready to go home. So, they’re the most unpleasant of all. And also, if something goes wrong with their dinner, or god help service, they’ll be the first to report it to the Boss. If he happens to be at the restaurant, those who know him suddenly surround him. First of all to say hi to him, secondly to make us all understand that they’re “special.”

I guess the second most important person is the manager, who is the face of the restaurant; he’s the first to greet everyone at the door and shows them to their tables. He’s the one who has to make sure that everything goes smoothly and, if necessary, he decides if any complementary items are necessary. He always wears a nice suit, and speaks without an accent, so he is quite different from most of us. He decides what music will be played, and how much the lights will be dimmed. He puts in liquor and other orders, and supervises all day-to-day activities. From the customers’ point of view, he clearly is perceived as the boss of the restaurant.

I’d say the next social group within our restaurant is the wait staff and the bartender, or maybe the chef and sous chef in the kitchen. I’m not really sure. The chef is only a hero if he does something extra ordinary, otherwise most people don’t really care about him. He wears a uniform, which is a white suit like outfit, same as all the other guys that work with him. He is the only American in the kitchen; all the other guys are from South or Central America. I’ve seen chefs who treat everyone else like dogs, and I never really understood why that is. Maybe they feel like they’re the only respectable figure, and all the others are like second grade people. I don’t like chefs except for one or two, and I think most waiters share my opinion.

So maybe the floor staff could be next, because we interact with the people all the time, but nothing really depends on us. We wear nice black pants and shirts, even look fashionable sometimes. We speak English, and are able to interact with our customers in a friendly, sometimes humorous manner. The chef however has more authority than the wait staff, but he’s not so visible to the public. So I can’t really decide who the public considers as more important.

The bottom group in our social hierarchy might be the bus boys and the dishwashers. The dish washers are clearly invisible to the customers, and no one ever mentions them. They might say things regarding the quality of their food or service, but never say “Hey, look how clean these dishes are.” The busboys are there to help the waiters; we’re ones who pay them at the end of the night. I don’t like the responsibility of deciding how much money I should give them, but I guess that’s how it works everywhere else. Most of them don’t really speak English, so they can’t really chat with the customers. Actually they not even supposed to. They rarely even get a “thank you” from the people, even though they work very hard too.

So this I think is the social order in which people might rank us. I want to point out again that this is not my order, only what I think might be from the customers’ point of view. I have more of a socialist view, I’d like to think that we all have to equally contribute, getting the same reward, and do our best to make sure the business functions the way it suppose to. Now I’d like to examine how our little society can be compared to another one, such as the caste system of India. This may not be the perfect base for comparison, but some similarities can definitely be found. I noticed that one of my class mates did the same comparison regarding her subject.

Robbins mentions four groups in his book. The highest rank of all is the Brahmins, priests who devote their lives to life-long teaching and worshipping. This somewhat reminds me of the owner of my restaurant. His best interest is that his employees should continuously learn to do their jobs better and better. He however doesn’t worship any kind of god, -or maybe he does but I don’t know about it- what he worships is money. If business is good, money flows to him, and he’s very happy. He can take long vacations, or buy a new fetish object, such as a boat, a new car and so forth. So definitely he stands on the top of the hierarchy, he represents the highest cast.

The next group in this caste system is the Kshattriya, who in our case is the management as top administration. This cast includes the chef and the general manager. The chef is responsible for everything that goes on in the kitchen, and he reports directly to the “boss”. The other member of this group is the general manager who is responsible for the restaurant’s day-to-day activities, keeps contact with the customers and the floor staff as well.

The next cast is the Vaisya, which is comprised of farmers and merchants. In our case, it would probably mean the wait staff. We are the working class people, doing our best to create wealth to the ones above us. We are the connection between the management and the bottom cast, the Sudra, which includes the bus boys, and the dishwashers. Our cast system however is very similar in some respect to what we see in India. The distribution of resources somewhat follows this hierarchy, because obviously the ones on top earn the most, and those on the bottom the less money.

This hierarchy can be found, I think in most restaurants. The basis for this stratification is often not only the differences in occupation. Generally we can see that many other factors, such as nationality, the ability to speak English, education, gender, seniority also plays in important role. The cast system in India is of course a lot more complicated than this, there are thousands of casts, and upward mobility is almost impossible. In our society there is opportunity for all of us to get ahead, by either learning to speak languages, getting more education, or just working hard.

I think I painted a somewhat factual and real picture as to how restaurant employees and their customers behave and interact with each other, what are the motives of each groups, and how all this manifests itself. All the above mentioned facts might be new to someone who never worked in a restaurant, but for us who do, I don’t think I said anything new. Every restaurant or any other place for that matter, where people work and live is a little society of its own, with distinctive rules and norms as to what behavior is expected and accepted by that group.

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