Empirical Observation Analysis

The event I observed took place in the Campus Center at the Blue Wall dining area. The main subject of this event is a Caucasian female student working at the Grill as a cashier interacting with different customers.

As I was observing, most of the events share a similarity such as the Caucasian female employee would put a smile on to greet the customers(students) before asking what they would like to order. Most of the conversations between the Caucasian female employee and customers started with either “Hi, what can I get for you” or “Hello, what can I get for you”. For instance, an African American customer approached and the Caucasian female employee greeted with the smile on and asked him “Hello, what can I get for you?”, the African American customer replied “Can I get a chicken and fries basket please? Transaction was made, the Caucasian female employee asked if there’s anything else the African American customer wants. The conversation ended with “I’m good, thanks” by the African American customer and the Caucasian female employee said “Have a good one”.

From my personal experience of living in the United States and interacting with Americans, it seems like it is absolutely normal to greet the customers during the interactions in American culture and vice versa for the customers to greet the employees. An employee is considered friendly if he or she greets you and help with your order, and it is polite for a customers to thank the employee by helping their orders.

However, there was a few interactions that seem irregular from the pattern we observed. The Caucasian female employee encountered some Asian customers with accents she couldn’t really understand. It was taking more time for the Caucasian female employee to finish their order because she was not able to comprehend what the Asian customers were requesting. I have noticed that the Caucasian female employee had to lean closer to the Asian customers to understand what they were saying.

In those two cases, the Caucasian female employee was able to help customers with their orders smoothly if they are the native speakers of this country; however, it took Caucasian female employee more time to comprehend what the Asian customers want due to their strong accents and not being a native speaker of this country.