Can Just Get Together for Caramels or Coffee?

“Maybe we can just get together and eat a bunch of caramels” (Good Will Hunting). –

Student's experiences aren't confined to the classroom, or even to the school itself. One of the saddest notions of schooling is that it must take place within the walls of the classroom. The world is out there to interact with. One small assignment we do in my course is as follows.  1) I assign students to go to a) Starbucks (non-drive thru), or b) Apple Store. I give the students these questions: What does the company do successfully? How does communication function at Starbucks/Apple Store to facilitate sales, comfort, habit, interpersonal relations? Deborah Tannen in her essay "The display of identities in talk at work" explained the incivility that characterizes many contemporary social interactions in our work and school settings. Yet, Starbucks and the Apple Store use very causal conversations to make us feel like friends, and we enjoy the experience, so we return. Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz attributes his company's success not simply to the quality of its coffee but also to the enjoyable social experiences awaiting those who visit Starbucks stores. The commodification of the coffee or Apple experience are marketing strategies whereby positive aesthetic and emotional qualities are rhetorically linked not only with branded products but also with the act of consumption itself. Can we replicate these communication strategies to a place we visit to improve "sales"? 

The students return with their answers and they include some description of one or more of the following: (i) the speech situation, including participants' reasons for engaging in conversation and the nonverbal activities that accompany their talk; (ii) participants' social identities and preexisting relationships; (iii) participants' geographical location; and (iv) the temporal boundaries that mark conversational beginnings and ends. I have them pull out environmental and architectural elements that control nonverbal behaviors such as signs, lines, lighting, flow of traffic, greetings, eye contact, use of names, etc. They pick what worked and what failed. The next class day we split into nonverbal teams. Each team is given a task to find the "coffee-talk" successful element: greetings, signs, seating, flow, etc. We then walk to the Enrollment Center. Outside the Enrollment Center I given them a worksheet for each group, and ask them: How does communication function at the GCC Enrollment Center to facilitate sales, comfort, interpersonal relations? How does the Enrollment Center create an enjoyable social experience?

Forty minutes after arrival at the GCC Enrollment Center I gather the students into a group outside the building and we discuss their nonverbal interactions and identify communication behaviors of success or improvement. If Starbucks is successful doing ___, then where can the GCC Enrollment Center adopt the same verbal and nonverbal communication strategies? How does the Enrollment Center de-voice students? What in the layout, the architecture inhibits the experience, so we don't talk to each other?

The students usually identify how at Starbucks casual conversations are an explicit, integral part of the Starbucks experience, but at the Enrollment Center casual conversations do not occur. The Starbucks experience is so much more than just coffees. It's the conversation you have with a friend, a moment of solitude at the end of the day, a quick stop on the way to the movies. I get them to see that the it, a coffeehouse is the ideal place for people who want to be alone but need company for it. The Enrollment experience is not the same experience. The students find what makes the building, the layout, the interpersonal interactions chaotic, forced, and unfriendly, which results in the students/patrons not wanted to visit their “friendly” advisor. The students approach the problem of the Enrollment Center with an eye on physical objects. At Starbucks the physical objects - coffee beans, CDs that customers can use to replicate that experience at home help the place feel comfortable. It feels like a place you can talk with a friend. At Apple they help me. They interact with me like it is our living room. We play. These spaces are spaces of social interaction. The space and conversation are central elements in the Apple and Starbucks experience. How can we fix the GCC Enrollment Center to make it a friendly experience where students will come to get personal advising for their college pathway? 

This week-long project culminates with the students presenting a report with diagramed layouts on how to fix the GCC Enrollment Center experience. I’ve then shared the reports with the Vice President or Dean. The project links neatly to our ninth and sixteenth course competence: identify and explain the elements and characteristics of nonverbal communication & examine the impact of interpersonal communication in the workplace.

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