The order of ordering: analysing customer-bartender service encounters in public bars

280 Pages·2017·6.42 MB·English

Loughborough University
Institutional Repository
The order of ordering:
analysing
customer-bartender service
encounters in public bars
ThisitemwassubmittedtoLoughboroughUniversity’sInstitutionalRepository
by the/an author.
Additional Information:
• A Doctoral Thesis. Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements
for the award of Doctor of Philosophy of Loughborough University.
Metadata Record: https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/2134/14293
Publisher: (cid:13)c Emma Richardson
Please cite the published version.
This item was submitted to Loughborough University as a PhD thesis by the
author and is made available in the Institutional Repository
(https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/) under the following Creative Commons Licence
conditions.

For the full text of this licence, please go to:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/
THE ORDER OF ORDERING:
ANALYSING CUSTOMER-BARTENDER SERVICE ENCOUNTERS IN PUBLIC
BARS

by
Emma Richardson

A DOCTORAL THESIS
Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of Doctor of Philosophy
at
Loughborough University
February 2014

© Emma Richardson 2014
Acknowledgments

Firstly, I would like to thank my supervisor Elizabeth Stokoe for encouraging me to begin
this journey. I can’t thank Liz enough for her support and guidance over the past three years.
Liz has always gone above and beyond her role as a supervisor; I am so grateful to her for
taking me on as her student. I appreciate, and I am thankful in more ways than I can express,
for her investment in me, and my research. Secondly, my thanks go to Charles Antaki for
supervising my second year of study. I give thanks to Charles for creating a space to engage
in thoughtful debate about my data, my findings and my future.
I am extremely thankful to the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), for
funding my research and providing me with the means to undertake this project.
At Loughborough University, particularly within the Social Sciences department, I
have been provided with a supportive learning environment full of people who are always
willing to help with whatever is needed. I offer my thanks to the Discourse and Rhetoric
Group (DARG). The members, and visitors, of this group have contributed to nurturing my
conversation analytic skills; the group is an invaluable resource. I also thank members of the
group for their interest, comments, and suggestions on my data.
My thanks are also given to colleagues of the Loughborough Qualitative Digital
Research Laboratory (LiQUiD Lab), past and present. In particular, I thank Nicola Clarke and
Gareth Wiltshire for their friendship. Through this group, and the members within it, I’ve had
the chance to meet and work with some exceptional PhD students who have enriched my
personal and academic development over the past three years.
i
To Sarah Lewis, Jo Meredith and Pauline van Romondt Vis, you three have been an
absolute joy to share this experience with. I thank you for your engaging conversation, for
office yoga, for your tolerance of my relentless, dramatic, exclamations of “I hate my life”,
as, in reality, this couldn’t have been further from the truth. Additional thanks go out to Chloe
Shaw, who I started this journey with; thanks for showing me the ropes!
I’d like to thank all of my friends outside of university; who have each supported me
in different, but equally important, ways over the last three years. I thank them for the wine
and the listening ears, for the nights out, for the nights in, for always understanding when I
have to miss an event due to ‘work’. My friends are all brilliant and I don’t know what I
would do without them. Special thanks go out to my dear friend Chloe Mcsweeney. You are
always interested in my research, always proud of my achievements and I’m so pleased I get
to officially thank you for the last seven years. I thank you for listening to me, no matter what
the problem, no matter what the hour, no matter how many times you have heard the same
problem. I also send my thanks to Danny Ball for his continued interest and support, “You’re
always there when I call, but you’re never on time”. Much love to you friends.
Finally, I give thanks to my family. I extend a huge thank you to my parents who have
prioritized my education for seven long years. In reading this, you can both breathe a sigh of
relief. I couldn’t put into words the gratitude I feel for the sacrifices you have made to
advance my gains. Because of you two, I’ve achieved more than I ever dreamed of. Thank
you for believing in me.
I dedicate this thesis to Terrence William Bradford, my Grandad. Over the years, my
Grandad has taught me if a job is worth doing, it is worth doing right and that no job is
impossible; there is always a way. Consider that lesson learned.

ii
Material based on the research of Chapter 4 has been published in part as:

Richardson, E., & Stokoe, E. (in press). The order of ordering: Requests, objects and
embodied conduct in a public bar. In T. Heinemann & M. Rauniomaa (Eds.). Interacting with
things: The sociability of objects. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

iii
Abstract

This thesis will explore how customers and bartenders accomplish the service encounter in a
public house, or bar. Whilst there is a body of existing literature on service encounters, this
mainly investigates customer satisfaction and ignores the mundane activities that comprise
the service encounter itself. In an attempt to fill this gap, I will examine how the activities
unfold sequentially by examining the spoken and embodied conduct of the participants, over
the course of the encounter. The data comprise audio -and video- recorded, dyadic and multi-
party interactions between customer(s) and bartender(s), occurring at the bar counter. The
data were analyzed using conversation analysis (CA) to investigate the talk and embodied
conduct of participants, as these unfold sequentially.
The first analytic chapter investigates how interactions between customers and
bartenders are opened. The analysis reveals practices for communicating availability to enter
into a service encounter; with customers being found to do this primarily through embodied
conduct, and bartenders primarily through spoken turns. The second analytic chapter
investigates the role of objects in the ordering sequence. Specifically, the analysis reveals
how the Cash Till and the seating tables in the bar are mobilized by participants to
accomplish action. In the third analytic chapter, multi-party interactions are investigated,
focusing on the organization of turn-taking when two or more customers interact with one or
more bartenders. Here, customers are found to engage in activities where they align as a unit,
with a lead speaker, who interacts with the bartender on behalf of the party. In the final
analytic chapter, the payment sequence of the service encounter is explored to investigate at
what sequential position in the interaction payment, as an action, is oriented to. Analysis
reveals that a wallet, purse, or bag, may be displayed and money or a payment card retrieved,
iv
in a variety of sequential slots, with each contributing differentially to the efficiency of the
interaction. I also find that payment may be prematurely proffered due to the preference for
efficiency.
Overall, the thesis makes innovative contributions to our understanding of customer
and bartender practices for accomplishing core activities in what members come to recognize
as a service encounter It also contributes substantially to basic conversation analytic research
on ‘openings’, which has traditionally been founded on telephone interactions, as well as the
action of requesting. I enhance our knowledge of face-to-face opening practices, by revealing
that the canonical opening sequence (see Schegloff, 1968; 1979; 1986) is not present, at least
in this context. From the findings, I also develop our understanding of how objects constrain,
or further, progressivity in interaction; while arguing for the importance of analysing the
participants’ ‘semiotic field’ in aggregate with talk and embodied conduct. The thesis also
contributes to existing literature on multi-party interactions, identifying a new turn-taking
practice with a directional flow that works effectively to accomplish ordering. Finally, I
contribute to knowledge on the provision of payment, an under-researched yet prominent
action in the service encounter. This thesis will show the applicability of CA to service
providers; by analysing the talk and embodied conduct in aggregate, effective practices for
accomplishing a successful service encounter are revealed.

v
Table of contents

Acknowledgments ..................................................................................................................... i
Abstract .................................................................................................................................... iv
Table of contents ..................................................................................................................... vi
Table of figures ......................................................................................................................... x
Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 1
Chapter 1: The social life of the bar: A literature review .............................................. 6
1.0 Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 6
1.1 What we know about bars ................................................................................................ 6
1.2 What we know about service encounters ......................................................................... 9
1.3 What we know about workplace and institutional studies ............................................. 12
1.3.1 CA studies of service encounters on the telephone ............................................... 16
1.3.2 CA studies in face-to-face service encounters ....................................................... 18
1.4 What we don’t know about service encounters ............................................................. 22
Chapter 2: Methodology ................................................................................................. 25
2.0 The problem ................................................................................................................... 25
2.1 Approach to data collection ........................................................................................... 25
2.2 Locating the research setting ......................................................................................... 27
2.3 The ethical considerations .............................................................................................. 31
2.3.1 The bar managers .................................................................................................. 31
2.3.2 The bartenders ....................................................................................................... 32
vi
2.3.3 The customers ........................................................................................................ 33
2.4 The data .......................................................................................................................... 36
2.4.1 Preparation of the data ........................................................................................... 37
2.4.2 Transcription of the data ........................................................................................ 38
2.5 Conversation analysis: Talk and embodied conduct ...................................................... 44
2.5.1 Basic concepts in conversation analysis ................................................................ 46
2.5.2 Turn-taking ............................................................................................................ 46
2.5.3 Turn design and action .......................................................................................... 47
2.5.4 Sequence organization ........................................................................................... 48
2.6 Analytic steps taken ....................................................................................................... 49
Chapter 3: Opening encounters at the bar counter ...................................................... 51
3.0 Introduction .................................................................................................................... 51
3.1 Openings in interaction .................................................................................................. 52
3.1.1 Openings on the telephone .................................................................................... 52
3.1.2 Face-to-face openings ............................................................................................ 55
3.2 Analysis.......................................................................................................................... 59
3.2.1 The practice of hovering ........................................................................................ 60
3.2.2 Opening interaction with “You all right” .............................................................. 73
3.2.3 Practices for identifying the next customer ........................................................... 77
3.2.4 Customer speaks first ............................................................................................ 84
3.3 Discussion ...................................................................................................................... 90
vii