Erving Goffman's Ethnographic Study

An Ethnographic Study Macy’s Employees Social Performances

In my ethnographic study, I apply theoretical concepts developed by Erving Goffman in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life to the behavior of employees in the retail department store, Macy’s. Goffman (1959) argues that social interactions in everyday life can be understood as presentations between performers and audiences. Within social establishments, he suggests four analytical frameworks may govern how performers stage their “characters” including the technical, political, structural and cultural; he also argues that the aforementioned perspectives are situation-specific and thus can also be analyzed within a broader dramaturgical framework (Goffman 1959). The task of this
research project is to determine the relative importance of each perspective in the event that they conflict, or at least provide incentives for different types of performances. The social establishment for my dramaturgical analysis will be the clothing department store, Macy’s, and in particular I will focus on the social performance of the store’s employees. The practical importance of this research is to better understand the basic motivations and behaviors of various actors within retail stores in general, which is useful for both scholarly and practical purposes for corporations and customers alike. My findings will suggest that while each of the four perspectives are useful for understanding the performances of Macy’s employees, the most important perspective when they conflict is their adherence to the cultural values of professionalism, politeness, and civility, because the costs of a “performance breakdown” are so high for both the individual employees and the corporation at large.

When I first planned the scope of my ethnographic study, I imagined I would take a relatively passive role as an observer from the shadows, without much personal interaction with

any of the store employees or customers. However, I soon realized this would be impossible given the unique situational parameters of a retail store, in which customers are expected, if not explicitly then implicitly, to actively shop for products. So in order to conform to this expectation, within minutes I decided it was necessary to “dramatize” my performance in order to conceal my true self. This meant putting away my notebook and starting to ruffle through clothes. As Goffman (1959:288) observes, “the very obligation and profitability of appearing always in a steady moral light, of being a socialized character, forces one to be the sort of person who is practiced in the ways of the stage.” The personal incentive for me to adjust my performance was particularly strong; besides the initial embarrassment of being “discovered” as a “fake” shopper, the more significant consequence would be getting ejected from the store and having to terminate my research. As a result, for the first 20 minutes I was consumed with randomly shuffling through various shirts, jackets, jeans, etc. in order to manipulate the impressions of observing employees.

However, my first observation pertinent to my research question came when a young saleswoman approached me and asked if I need help looking for anything in particular. According to rational choice theory, the single greatest priority of any economic agent is to maximize profits (Satz and Ferejohn 1994). A corporation and all of its employees, in theory, should care for nothing more than how to boost revenue and decrease expenses (Satz and Ferejohn 1994). In the context of retail, this is achieved first and foremost through sales (Gómez, Mclaughlin, and Wittink 2004). And while employees have a general incentive to create sales for their company to ensure that it survives, many also have a direct incentive, such as through commissions or promotions (Gómez et al. 2004). Therefore, one may assume that the most

important analytical perspective of retail salespersons in political, that is “the actions which each participant (or class of participants) can demand of other participants, the kinds of deprivations and indulgences which can be meted out in order to enforce these demands, and the kinds of social controls which guide this exercise of command and use of sanctions” (p. 282). However, if politics were the only perspective utilized by salespersons in order to compel customers to purchase products, we could envision a range of performances as mild as begging and pleading to extreme as intimidation and force. However, my observation of the saleswoman’s performance revealed very little politicking at all. She greeted me with a warm smile and asked, “Can I help you with something?” In turn, I replied, “No thank you,” and then she said, “Okay, let me know if you need anything!” and then walked away. If her performance’s only goal was the political objective of selling product, it was clearly a failure. However, I would argue that it revealed the much greater importance of the company’s culture that demands its employees behave with respect and civility. I’m reminded of Goffman’s (1959:281) observation that “a tacit agreement is maintained between performers and audience to act as if a given degree of opposition and of accord existed between them.” Given that the motivations of salespersons are inherently self-serving, there is a basic understanding by shoppers that their “advice” and “help” is often manipulative. No audience ever truly “falls” for the performance of a salesperson, and as a result they have managed their expectations to tolerate rejection and dismissiveness as it occurs on a regular basis. In this light, the job of a salesperson is inherently self-defeating, for the more aggressively their “politic” to influence their customers the less credible their politics become. For this very reason, a strict employee culture is necessary to manage the range of performances exhibited by their salespersons.

The study dragged on for the next two hours at a relatively slow pace. Given the controlled atmosphere of a department store (where not only are employees constantly on the prowl, but virtually every move is detected by surveillance cameras) there is very little freedom for actors who wish to do anything besides shop. I was reminded by Foucault’s theorizing of disciplinary societies where “order is maintained through technologies of control such as spatial separation, time management, confinement, surveillance, and a system of examination that classifies and ranks individuals” (Seidman 2012:185). For the first time in my life I realized how coercive the experience of shopping can be, as Seidman (2012:186) observes, “Power in a disciplinary order is manifested less in the form of repression than in the production of subjects or social selves who are also objects of social control” (Seidman 2012:186). In other words, “It is not the power to enforce obedience that makes possible these social structures” (Seidman 2012:186) as I was never physically confronted by an instrument of power such as a security guard; “rather, social order is produced by a series of disciplining strategies… whose aim is to regulated behavior” (p. 186). A security guard never had to confront me because my behavior was already sufficiently disciplined and I implicitly understood that I had no choice but to pretend to shop.

Finally, after the two-our time period came to an end, I grabbed a pair of socks and headed to the cash register. Then I heard raised voices coming from the front of the store; a woman with two young children was arguing with the cashier over her declined credit card. By the time I was within ear shot I heard her say, “Swipe it again! It always does this! Swipe it again!” However, because of her aggressive voice, and the lack of control over her children, the situation was becoming disruptive. According to the technical perspective, an establishment is

judged “in terms of its efficiency and inefficiency as an intentionally organized system of activity for the achievement of predefined objectives” (Goffman 1959:282).
In the context of a retail cashier, this would require the systematic repetition of their primary job to scan products and retrieve payments (Gabbur et al. 2011); the woman’s failure to provide payment and then subsequent arguing was clearly a disruption to the cashier’s technical performance. However, in real life, the cashier did not reorient his performance to meet his technical objective; he did not demand that she leave or call for security to escort her out of the building. I would argue that this is because the importance of Macy’s culture, which is to be polite, respectful and courteous, is more important than its technical objective of scanning customers in line at a rapid pace. To understand the reason, Goffman (1959:283) asks us to consider the implications of a “performance disruption,” or a social interaction in which the existing communication comes “to an embarrassed and confused halt.” While this certainly happened to the cashier from a technical perspective as he was forced to halt his rapid succession of scanning products and hekping new customers in life, the negative implications were minor; the company simply lost about 5 minutes of employee productivity. However, the implications of a performance disruption to the company’s culture could be far more severe. If compelled to leave the
building through force, then dozens of onlooking customers could draw the conclusion that the company used heavy handed tactics unnecessarily against a women with two young children; even worse, a culture violation such as this might even make the news and become an even PR mess for the organization. As these two perspectives came into conflict, I observed once again that the Macy’s employee prioritized his cultural rather than technical performance.

This study was concerned with how Macy’s employees perform in social interactions when various of Goffman’s analytical perspectives come into conflict.
This is an important area of study because of how relevant shopping and customer-employee interactions are to our everyday lives as citizens and consumers. Additionally, the study is useful to scholars of sociology, as well as audiences interested in the sociological theory of how retail employees might act in given circumstances. The study found that when different perspectives came into conflict, the first priority of Macy’s employees was to maintain the company’s culture of professionalism, politeness and civility. I speculate that this is because the cost of a “performance breakdown” is particularly severe in culture, but less so with respect to politics or
technicality.