Ye Olde Hob Lob

While in high school, I definitely belonged to a group based on skills, but it had nothing to do with school. I had a part time job, so I was part of an occupational group (41). I worked at Hobby Lobby, so there was a sort of a creative knowledge I needed to learn. I also had to learn different terms for specific products or different procedures for making the same thing (giving customers choices for how to make the same thing). At first, I think I kind of had to earn my way into the group I am now a part of because they all knew all that knowledge already. This reminded me of the hierarchy or level of knowledge of job skills explained in the book (51). Once I learned all of that, I was accepted into the group. Now there were a couple different groups, some that I was a part of and others I had nothing to do with other than we all worked in the same store. I had my small group of friends, who were not only coworkers, but had similar interests and beliefs as well (41). We definitely had some inside jokes specific to our group, like when we were all really stressed out we called it a “double eyebrow situation” because when you cover your face, you touch your fingers to your eyebrows. Stressful situations required us to put both hands on our faces, thus touching both eyebrows.
Another piece of verbal folklore that was part of our group was that we all called our boss “Dave” even though that wasn’t his name. We used this pseudonym so that we could vent our frustrations about him when he was around, that way he would have no idea we were talking about him. This was something that the “lifers” (workers who had worked at the store for a long time) would introduce to the new workers. I guess we had a lot more verbal folklore within our folk group than I originally thought.
The way we dressed also distinguished groups within our store (54). All of the employees had to wear something that had the store name on it as well as a nametag, that part was store policy. All the cashiers had to wear these blue smocks that had pockets in front and tied on the sides and a generic blue nametag with the name printed off a label maker. The managers wore dress pants and nice shirts, along with their hierarchical gold nametags with their names preprinted on them. The people who mainly worked on the floor in specific departments wore blue vests and the same type of nametag as the cashiers. The “stock people,” the people who worked in the stockroom opening up boxes and moving freight, wore jeans and t-shirts, and then put on their vests if they came out onto the floor. This really made me think about how all the sudden there are four subgroups within the big group of employees and how there are obvious differences between them. It just surprised me because I never really took the time to notice these differences. This post is my response to the Chapter 2 Reflection Question.