Assignments
Little morsels of personal fun.
10/31/2018 0 Comments A War on McDonaldization: How to Break the Flow of Commerce with 20 Quarters and a Smile Modern breakfast culture is defined by convenience. Whether you’re getting a coffee at your local Starbucks in preparation for a long day of board meetings, or you’re ordering a quick bite from a fast food drive through on the commute to work, the expectation is that these options will be both efficient and readily available. If you’ve ever been in such popular venues during the early morning rush, you’ve undoubtedly experienced long lines moving at a fast pace. Customers are terse, workers keep it simple, and everyone leaves with what they need to start their day. The process is almost mechanical; chances are, you’ve had an order or two in your life that’s become rehearsed down to the please-and-thank-yous. But what happens when we interrupt the system? How will the mechanics of the well-oiled morning machine compensate when a wrench is thrown in? The assignment is simple: find a food-based location wherein the customers and staff act on a regulated routine, and force them all to break it with you.
While in Ann Arbor for a brief academic responsibility, I visited a local Starbucks coffee. Now, I’ve never been a huge proponent of coffee myself, and the lines out the door you usually see at college towns do nothing to persuade the less-than-avid drinker. It was easy to see how busy these venues became while walking to my morning classes – they made for the perfect target for social sabotage. Unfortunately, Ann Arbor facilities tend to test first thing in the morning, so I had to drop in alongside the far less concentrated noontime coffee crowd. My plan was simple: I would provide the cashier with an extra $5, and loudly announce to the rest of the store that they could avoid paying change if they simply requested to use the leftover funds. My expectation was that the monotonous interactions between cashier and customer would become more involved, as both parties kept close track of the tempting resource. I was wrong; the cashier, more than anyone, avoided mentioning the presence of the extra money to anyone who didn’t ask. Even when customers showed interest, most gave up when it came to splitting the $5 into smaller amounts. To create a social change, I had to change my approach. Once foot traffic settled, I spoke to the cashier again, this time requesting another $5 in change (quarters, specifically). I laid the coins out evenly on the counter, in plain view of both the cashier and customers, and made my announcement. As new waves of groggy college students wandered in with laptops blazing, a new bustle began. People were asking about the quarters, wondering whether it was some kind of program, offering their own additional change. The cashier began pointing me out to customers who were curious, and I made sure to smile and wave from a clearly visible seat. There was about $1.50 left on the counter when I ultimately left. What did I change, ultimately? Well, customer/worker interactions were becoming involved. Before, and during, the initial $5 contribution, the most either party could muster was confusion before quickly receding back into memorized monotony. After the quarters were laid down, people began looking up, smiling. Predetermined patterns were thrown through a loop as the repetitive ordering process these customers were used to was altered by a new circumstance. The machine didn’t break – but it did bend. I would love to try this little experiment again, perhaps during a far busier time frame, at a far busier location. New rules can obvious shake up the highly mechanized transactions, but can they change the very nature of the convenience-oriented consumer?
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If the eyes are the windows to the soul, then the stomach is a close second. You can tell a lot from someone by taking a peek into their daily dietary escapades; diet follows routine, income, free time, culture, and more, creating a cornucopia of fun facts out of the smallest of brown paper bags. This little experiment aims to show just how much you can learn about a person by looking at their refrigerator, with no prior knowledge of their life and with little to no advanced notice. That’s right – we’re going in rogue. I work in the science buildings on campus, so it’s not hard to run into graduate students and the occasional doctorate professional. While I couldn’t work up the courage to follow one of my professors home unannounced, I did manage to find a fresh-out-of-grad-school employee who was willing to give me five unmonitored minutes in his kitchen. Antoine is an Italian man, working in a radiology lab not too far off campus; he and his coworkers will drop by every now and again to make sure we aren’t poisoning ourselves. He lives in an affordable apartment complex with his girlfriend, and he’s a dog person. I refused to ask him about anything more – what I want to know can only be found in his fridge. As a college student myself, it’s exciting to know that such a full fridge is only a few years away. Antoine has a very well rounded assortment of produce, proteins, and condiments for all types of occasion. A few quick snacks are reminiscent of his heritage, while some are collegiate staples. The freezer is comparatively barren, but it seems to have a couple prepared meals on the ready. So, what can we surmise from Antoine’s groceries? Well, he’s certainly likes to cook! Most of his fridge is lined with unprocessed veggies, uncooked meats, eggs, and yogurt; the rest is toppings and garnishes. He doesn’t seem to be interested in seafood bouillabaisse or duck confit, opting for a more straightforward meal prep aided by his admittedly impressive wall of condiments. Of course, no recent college graduate would be complete without a bit of alcohol. What surprised me was the bowls, full of batters for future baking projects. Antoine didn’t strike me as the type to have the time for baking, and upon further inquiry, I was right! His girlfriend is a hobby baker who’s recently set up shop is his kitchen.
So, what could we learn from Antoine’s fridge? We know that he has some money to his name, and an eclectic taste indicative of other cultures. We know he has the time to cook, but probably not the time to go crazy. We know that his life is moving forward, with indications of meal prep and some extra hands in the kitchen, while still falling back on some habitual favorites. He’s employed, diet conscious, and has little free time, but is trying to inject more maturity into his dietary habits. I asked Antoine to confirm or deny my suspicions, and I wasn’t far off! Antoine has a natural knack for cooking, instilled by true-blood Italian family that demanded he learn how to make decent food. He regularly lacks the energy after work to tackle more ambitious projects, and tends to stick to his guns with some creative garnishes instead. He actively tries to avoid anything overly processed, opting for the freshest options available on a once college budget. On particularly late nights, he’ll crack open a beer while he runs through some paperwork – reminiscent of his earlier years, it helps him to focus, or at least gives him the patience. This exercise can be very illuminating if you’re looking to learn about the world of processed foods. If you’re not interested in raiding the house of a complete stranger on a whim, I would recommend taking a glance into your own kitchen to see what you buy, and why. Who knows – you might learn a thing or two about yourself from taking a quick pic of your own grocery bags! A food diary is a pretty straightforward method of understanding just how prevalent processed foods can be in modern diets. The goal is simple: record your dietary intake, from snacks to drinks to supplements, throughout the week. Each day, you remove a processed item from your diet, ultimately ending with a collection of clean meals at the end of the week. While this may seem like a hassle, it takes almost no time out of your day, it's incredibly educational, and you may find yourself looking forward to challenging yourself with fresh, unprepared ingredients by week's end. How many processed foods do you eat? Is it possible to remove them from your diet? What counts as "processed?" This quick and easy activity will teach you just how much of the food world is industrial, and you'll learn how to cut away the processed pieces to make room for fresh, healthy alternatives.
Here's a quick example I made of my own dietary habits. Since I'm a busy college students, and I don't exactly have the time or resources to plan my meals a week ahead of time, I've only recorded the first two days. This should be a good template, if you're looking to make a food diary of your own. Day 1: The goal is to eat normally, like any other day. BREAKFAST
LUNCH
DINNER
Day 2: The goal is to avoid all processed food. BREAKFAST
LUNCH
DINNER
Day 1 has my regular contenders: flavored whole grain cereal, a campus cafeteria lunch with all the bells and whistles, and my favorite all-around easy make breakfast sandwich. While this may seem simple, and relatively innocuous as far as processing goes, day 1 was rife with processed foods. Breakfast cereals have a long and well documented history with industrial processing, and milk isn’t too different. Dinner had some questionable candidates, like prepackaged meats and bagels. Lunch is a bit more up in the air. Our campus cafeterias claim to use fresh ingredients grown on campus, but the actual contents of the ingredients, and the processing undergone to put them into the cafeterias, is unknown to me. The biggest offender in the processed foods category is unquestionably drinks. Beverages are always distributed in packaging, with a number of additives and flavors exhaustively listed on the side of the jug. Like I said, I don’t exactly have a lot of money to spend, so orange juice straight from the orchard will have to wait. So, how can I cut down on my already process-avoidant diet? First, all drinks are out the window; glasses of water dominate throughout day 2, as to avoid anything artificial. With advance notice, I could’ve probably invested in some natural tea leaves to keep the day interesting. Meals are also simplified to avoid anything but the freshest ingredients one could hope to acquire at their local supermarket. Luckily, I keep a very decent amount of produce around, so I had something to fall back on. Breakfast is just as simple as day 1, and just as satisfying. Cereals may be a low effort alternative to a fresher breakfast, but avoiding the processed shredded wheat was by no means an inconvenience. Lunch is a bit more challenging – it was difficult to find an appropriate amount of protein and veggies while avoiding anything even worth suspicion of industrial processing. I’m not even sure that the chicken breasts they serve in the cafeterias are without processing, but I’m hoping that I got off easy. Dinner is far less well rounded – it felt like an amalgamation of fridge fillers, rather than a proper meal, and it was certainly lacking in the visible amount of protein I try to work in on a daily basis. Again, given advance notice, one could easily throw together a bake or a protein using fresh ingredients from a local market, but I had no such liberties. In this day and age, and especially for a college student on a budget, it’s hard to find a meal that’s not once been touched by the industry. Greens come in bags, meats come in plastic, and drinks come in jugs of all shapes and sizes. Of course, these things can be avoided, and I believe it fully possible that someone could survive off of fresh produce and direct supplier protein for the rest of their days. However, these options can get expensive, and some are difficult to put together. When money is scarce, and time is a valuable resource, it’s easy to fall back on processed foods, regardless of what may really be inside of them. After all, with a full schedule and a weekly budget to boot, I don’t have the liberty of eating a meal untouched by the industry. |
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