Pet Peeves

To avert boredom, yours and mine, I'll change the subject a tad today. My main goal for this blog is to generate interest, discussion and awareness about the role the "third place" plays in our lives. As an amateur social scientist, one of my life long passions has been to observe and study people, I won't feign objectivity, I see and record things based upon my own hodge podge lens on the world. My neighborhood is my habitat, generally speaking it is easier for me to decode what is going on at "face value" when I don't have to translate into my native tongue. I don't just mean literal language here, I'm referring to all the filters and guards we put up to try to understand one another across cultures (ie. gender, age, race, economics, politics, religion).

As mentioned in my last blog about the "state of the pub", cultures are in a constant state of change. Our physical world or sense of place shifts beneath our feet and many of us yearn for a certain balance of familiarity without total predictability. We want smells, tastes, sights and sounds from our good associations and memories from our pasts. The continuity makes us feel "at home". Embedded in our "third places" are all sorts of values which are imprinted on us early on, some of them are too obvious to state, others are more subtle and difficult to identify. Some are so intertwined we cannot tease them apart from one another without destroying the ambiance, mood, atmosphere.

What am I talking about? I'll see if I can describe it through some examples. What sorts of things make me comfortable in a "third place"? A clean bathroom with supplies in place! Creative bathrooms show personality, which I love, but are an extra. Also, I hate the hand dryers that break your eardrums, make your skin warp in freakish ways and never dry your hands in time. As a result you wipe your hands on your pants or grab the door with wet hands (nice). Yes, acoustics are important to me. Background music is fine, but not so I have to scream or use hand signals to talk with someone. One should be able to sit at a table and have a private conversation, that works on multiple levels, again proper acoustics, but also cell phone management. I'm talking about manners, and my cultural, undoubtedly antiquated, sensibilities. Similarly, I have children and they are unruly, on occasion I break down and take them out to dinner with me, but I try to keep in mind that others sometimes choose a quiet intimate restaurant to remember what it was like BK -before kids. What else. Thankfully wait staff have caught on to the reality that single people, in particular woman, are comfortable and happy to be dining alone so we too want a window seat. This is what good customer service looks like in my "third places": eye contact, a smile, audible, helpful(ie. knowledge of the service being provided, good at reading social cues).

My pet peeves reveal my stripes as they say, my cultural predilection for order, cleanliness, privacy, boundaries. The reason I haven't chosen to critique what I don't like about particular businesses is that I generally am ready and willing to forgive an oversight or problem if I sense goodwill. After all, I have great admiration for small business enterprise and know from first hand experience that it ain't easy being on the other side of the operation sometimes. I also find that I am much more open and tolerant and shift my expectations when I am not on my own turf such as when I travel to another country.