Ethnography Results Week 6

Sweet Eugene’s House of Java

Thursday March 10, 2011
7:00-9:00pm

Quantitative
Totals for the evening:
Order drink to go: ? (I wasn’t in a good place to view this)
On Computer: 25
Reading book/ doing homework: 6 (defined as having book and/or spiral and pencil)
Working with computer and book: 2
Visiting: 14 (some of these appeared to have the intention of studying)
Main goal to eat:  2(these people read a book or used their computer until food arrived. Then they ate and left)
Eating and visiting: 2 (they were eating but that did not appear to be the main goal based on how long they stuck around afterwards)

Collected times for people who left (x means I don’t know when they arrived):
X – 7:27 (2 studying)
X – 7:44 (2 visiting)
X – 8:11 (2 studying – 1 was a tutor)
X – 8:15 (1 on computer)
7:08 – 7:44 (2 visiting)
7:07 – 8:10 (3 watching youtube videos)

 (Many other people came in or were already there when I started and did not leave before me. There were not as many people as there had been during week 5, but it was a fairly busy evening.)

Qualitative

My location
My fiancé, Jesse, and I couldn’t find a place near an outlet and a lot of the tables were dirty, so we ended up sitting on a couch until we spotted two girls beside an outlet preparing to leave. Jesse got some napkins and cleaned off the table the best he could. This evening was probably the dirtiest we had ever seen the place.

Once we moved to the outlet, we were in a spot at the very back of the coffee shop next to the back exit (the same spot as last week).

The Employees
As already mentioned the place was dirtier than usual. There were dirty dishes and trash on a coffee table in front of me, on tables to my right and left, piled along the bar at the window and on at least three different tables in the other rooms. An employee did come and clean but not until almost 9:00, meaning many of the dirty dishes sat around for 2+ hours.

The customers
To Clean or Not to Clean
While ordering drinks, I noticed a girl who came and hesitantly put her plates beside the cash register at the front.

All the dirty cups and plates on several different tables seemed to encourage customers to add their dirty dishes to the pile. The two women who were at the table we later claimed even pushed dishes aside at a table already stacked with dishes to make room for their cups.

I noted at least two people besides Jesse who cleaned off a table so that they could use it.

A place to watch music videos?
Three girls came in and sat on a couch at about the time we arrived and seemed to be watching youtube videos the entire hour that they were there.

Eating Chick-fil-A

Image from: constructbirmingham.wordpress.com

A guy in a suit and a girl sat near us with their Chick-fil-A bag. One had a coffee. I’m not sure whether they were discreet with their Chick-fil-A bag up at the front or not, but they were very open about it in the back room where we were even though there are signs requesting that we not bring in outside food or drink.

Differences from last week
The place was pretty busy and much dirtier than I have seen it before. This was the first time I saw people openly eating food they bought somewhere else.