Human Social Behavior in a Restaurant

The ethnography research that I studied took place inside a buffet restaurant. I visited and dined inside Home Town Buffet located in Portland, Oregon, on Saturday, March 7, 2009 around 4:00 P.M. Home Town Buffet is just one of the many restaurants to be found by Mall 205 just off of the busy freeway. However, it is the only buffet restaurant in this area that allows customers to eat their fill after they have paid their entrance fee. Along this promenade are many shops, including Home Depot and Dollar Tree. After a long day of walking and shopping, customers can just walk in and feast.

The specific question or topic that I studied was how people behave in a buffet restaurant setting. I have dined out in many types of restaurants before and realized that social behavior was quite different between a sit-in restaurant and a buffet restaurant. I wanted to study how people interact with one another and about their dinning habit in a restaurant setting where they serve themselves. I hypothesized that in a buffet restaurant, people interact less with others around them and paid more attention to their food.

The methodology that I chose for my ethnography research was participant observation. I chose this method because it was the easiest and most efficient way to obtain the information that I needed. Since it was a family oriented restaurant, I felt that many customers would not like to be bothered with questions. I also realized that I would be able to gain more accurate information if I just observed the social behavior in a natural environment and not alter it by asking people questions.

Home Town Buffet has always been one of my favorite buffet restaurants. When we were introduced to this project, I thought that this was the chance for me to make my observations on how people behave when they dine out. I have always been interested in how people behave in social settings because sometimes people can surprise you with what they do in public. When you opened your eyes and pay attention to others around you, you encountered many new insights about human nature.

When I first went into the restaurant, I wasn't sure what kind of things I should concentrate on. However, as soon as I sat down and looked around me, I noticed that the place was filled with all types of social behaviors. I jotted down who went to fill their plates first, what people were talking about, what kinds of food people ate, how workers interact with the customers, and other factors.

As soon as I walked into the buffet, I was met with a very long waiting line. I was wondering why it was so busy since it wasn't even a holiday. Everybody waiting in line conformed to the cultural norms and minded their own business. An older middle age man in front of me did break this ice breaker and conversed with a little girl in front of him. The girl had a pin of a picture of her and her parents attached to her shirt. The man asked her if she was spoiled because she was sitting on her mother's lap. She shook her head, but her mother confirmed that she was in fact really spoiled because she is the only child.

I thought that it was a cute conversation among strangers and that it should occur more often in our society. Because of the rise in crimes today, people are afraid to exchange a little friendly conversation with someone they don't know. Our society is ruled with strict etiquettes about public social behavior. When you go outside, you are expected to not look at or talk to anyone you don't know. If you do, they suspect you of something. Everybody is on edge and is always expecting something horrible to happen.

After I have waited for about 10 minutes and paid my entrance, I seated myself by the wall. The dinning area was packed with people of all ages. There were families with children, couples, teenage groups, and individuals. There were also many different races, including Asians, Hispanics, and African Americans. People were there for different reasons. There was a family whom came in with a whole bunch of birthday balloons and a cake. I was surprised to see so many groups of seniors. I had a feeling they came in often because most of the workers recognized and talked to them.

I went up to fill my plate and realized that there was no particular line. You just spoon whatever you want onto your plate in any random order. As I sat down to eat, I looked around the dinning area and made my observations.

There was a family of Hispanics sitting across from me that struck me. They had three young boys and an infant boy whom was still in his car seat. I was quite surprised to see that the boys were allowed to venture in their own ways. The young boys were all over the place. Their son whom was about five years old went back and forth by himself to the food area to fill his plate. He made his own ice cream cone, came back to his parents, and then ran back to the food area. The father was busy filling his own stomach, while the mother was feeding herself and the baby. I realized that no one else noticed because they were too busy feeding themselves or tending to their own children.

An old lady and her son sat in the table next to me. I overheard them complaining about how the restaurant was out of everything, including roast beef and string beans. They ate only a short time and left. There were many customers and not enough servers. However, they did refill the empty food bins as quickly as they disappeared. Each table was stacked with used plates because there were just not enough workers to collect them. After a while, a waitress went around the tables to clear the dishes and introduced herself. She wrote down her name, Aurora, on my receipt and told me to let her know if I needed anything.

I overheard a woman complaining to the manager. She was complaining about how dirty her fork was. The manager was a young girl, whom politely apologized. Others around her just concentrated on their plates and didn't pay any attention to the woman even though she went endlessly about her fork.

All this time, I was amused with all the interactions going on around me. People got up many times to refill their plates. There were food scraps all over the tables and on the floor. The workers whom were clearing the tables and refilling the food bins had very little conversation with the customers. When I was about to leave, I overheard a woman telling her husband how she was so proud of herself for getting a low-fat milkshake. I noticed that all this time, she had been refilling her plates with fatty foods.

My data observations confirmed my original assumptions about social behavior in a buffet restaurant. Even though there were a lot of things going on inside the restaurant, people still minded their own business. They were free to get up anytime, and that seemed to be the only thing on their minds. No one conversed with the people in the table next to them. Everybody concentrated on their plates and the people they came in with. When the workers came to clear their tables, the customers paid no attention to them. This restaurant environment was all about the food and nothing else.

Overall, my findings confirmed my insights on cultural phenomena. I knew that our culture was quickly changing from a once opened minded to a more closed minded society. Neighbors are afraid of each other. People have come to comply with the culture norm of keeping their space in public. Everybody's in for themselves. We don't work together like the natives in the Dani Sweet Potatoes film. Quickly in this fast pace world, people are withdrawing from their families and don't know the meaning of kinship. Our society emphasizes strongly on age expectations. As soon as an individual reaches 18 years of age, he is forced out of the family home to make his own living. We are becoming more and more secluded in our own world.