The Setting:

It is a cold November night in Kamloops BC. The coffee shop is lit with fluorescent lights similar to the type you’d see at a Wal-Mart or a 711, It smells of a mix of coffee and other assorted baked goods and soups. The atmosphere is fast paced and definitely not relaxing by any means. The coffee shop is riddled with various discussions of politics, sports and other various topics however a few conversations stood out to me which I will explain below.

The Players:

Girl A: Dressed in a camouflage hooded sweatshirt with lots of makeup on, appears to be happy, Talks mostly about family and world events

Girl B: Dressed fashionably in a nice shirt and jeans, Hair done with makeup and talks mostly about other people, girls in particular

Man A: Dressed in old blue jeans and a tattered, plaid jacket with scruffy facial hair, glasses and a ball cap. Talked mainly about sports and his distrust in modern refereeing.

Man B: Dressed very similar to Man A except with no ball cap or glasses. Talked about sports but seemed to get very excited when talking about politics.

Couple in Corner: Very very quiet, wasn’t able to make much observation at all aside from the fact that they both were on their cell phones for the entire duration of me making my observation notes

Mom: Curly grey hair, pink sweatshirt with puffy vest over top. Wearing glasses and winter boots. Very quiet

Daughter: Dressed in a winter coat with dark straight hair and dark jeans wearing sneakers. Also very very quiet.

Cashier: Colored hair, big framed glassed, cheery up beat personality but seems unhappy to be working when out of the public eye.

Old Man: Dressed in a winter coat, with old glasses and very friendly with an extrovert personality

The Plot:

Man A and B talked at first mostly about sports. Their discussion started at first over a football game and how the team that lost should have won. They argued for a few minutes about this while drinking their coffee before then switching the conversation over to American politics. I found this interesting as it is statistically recorded that older people discuss politics more often than younger people

Girl A and Girl B Talked mostly about other girls from my observation while being in the coffee shop. They didn’t have any drinks or anything, just sitting there. Girl B seemed to be more interested in gossiping about other girls where as Girl A tried to talk about things such as family and world events. Girl A seemed to shut out girl B and not pay much attention to what she wanted to talk about, and then would go on to talk for minutes at a time about other people, mostly girls.

Couple in Corner Hardly talked whatsoever. They were both staring into their cell phones drinking their coffees and barely made eye contact. In fact I don’t think they actually communicated about anything happening in the present time other than showing each other something on their cell phones.

Mom and Daughter hardly talked at all. They sat there and ate their meals and drank their coffees and that was about it. They sat down once the coffee shop was relatively full so I personally believe that they may have both been introvert type personalities and may have felt uncomfortable sitting in the busy coffee shop.

The Cashier was very friendly when I ordered my coffee and donut. However, I noticed while observing others that the cashier would appear to look unhappy when she thought nobody was looking at her.

The Finale:

While taking my notes I felt a little bit uncomfortable at first. On the drive to the coffee shop I had wondered if people would overlook me typing my notes but to my surprise I did not have any interruptions at all. In my opinion, from doing this observation I have realized that for the majority, it seems as though most people keep to themselves and the group that they go out with.

The two men talking about sports and politics eventually left after a good 15-20 minutes, and something interesting that I noticed was as soon as the two older men left, then the two girls left, and then the mother and daughter. It was almost as if the other people watched the two men leave, and then followed their trend. However this may have been a coincidence.

The main themes that I heard in my observations were conflict, gossip, family and sports. I did not hear a single word about religion in the thirty minutes that I was there for my observations which I found surprising as there were a wide range of people from different walks of life in the restaurant, old or young.

A big thing to point out that I also noticed is that a big majority if not all of the people who came in to order something to go would place their order and then close themselves off from the rest of the people in the store, whether that be by using their phone or simply staring off at advertisements around the shop. I did not see one person interact or socialize with someone else while waiting for their food which I found quite interesting really.

As I was finishing up my observation and my coffee, an older gentleman came in and sat down right beside me where the two girls were sitting that had just left. Unlike anyone else who I observed in the coffee shop that night, this guy was talking with everybody that would look at him. He was very upbeat and cheery and I ended up having a conversation with him. He was a war veteran in his late 80’s and told me how he didn’t really have any family or friends left so that’s why he likes to talk with everybody he can whenever he can. He sat alone at the table next to me with his winter coat on, glasses and his Scratch-And-Win tickets sipping his coffee. This really shocked me, here is a guy with apparently no family who talks to everyone he can. Yet out of everyone I observed with friends and family this man was by far the most socially interactive person I seen that night. You would think that as a society we would socialize more with so many friends and with cellphones giving us potential to talk to anybody we want at any time. Yet from my observations it seemed to be the opposite of that. It seemed as though the people who did not appear to have a cell phone or did not have it out were much more engaged in the conversations they were having. Where as the people with cell phones tended to pay less attention to the person they were with from what I observed. I really enjoyed doing this observation as it gave me a new perspective on society and how we interact with one another.