Tip Jars

Working as a barista for over three years now in various places I have still not come to an understanding of what makes a tip jar successful. I have tried countless methods to sway the customer into tipping. For one, the tip jar should never be empty but yet it should never be too full. There are customers who tip no matter what, but the majority of customers seem to decide they will tip on a whim. This whim can be perceived as something which can be persuaded.

Take a look at my tip jar today. It has a tiny cute puppy drawing with the label 'tips' on it as it announces understatedly what it is, and there are $1s in the jar.



A customary tradition is to set out a 'bait' in the tip jar when business is just beginning. This is meant for the customer to see that tipping is a trend. It is often true that a customary tipper receives far better attention than a regular non-tipper. Sometimes when someone thanks me for their espresso without tipping, I find myself saying in my head, "You're not welcome."

http://topcultured.com/35-tip-jars-designed-to-make-you-give-more/

girl with a sticker book

Watched this little girl putting stickers in her giant sticker book with pre-laid out pages on the subway just now. There were three bodies on the page, a white girl, a black girl, and a brown girl and the page was empty. She picked out a dress sticker and put it on the black doll. It was interesting to see her make this choice without any pushing from her mother and to think of what might be going through her head as she chose which figure to dress.

Do you remember playing with dolls when you were younger? Were they the same color as you? Did you have the option to play with dolls that were of different skin colors? How might variations of exposure affect the development of a child?

I was also thinking about her sticker book in that it confines her to specific body shapes of the dolls and a limited selection of clothing. From my view most of the clothing were floral prints and some kind of dress or shirt & skirt attire. What kind of messages is this imposing on the girl at such a young age?

Afraid to be Hipster

Hipster. What is a hipster? Why am I afraid of being a hipster? I live near and work in Williamsburg, the 'hipster capital of the world.' The definition of hipster, from dictionary.com is as follows: A person who follows the latest trends and fashions.

I have a pair of eyeglasses that I am embarrassed to wear because of their very inherent 'hipsterness.' I do see better when I wear them and I bought them when I was abroad in Korea where I taught English for a year in Seoul. I enjoyed the aesthetic of the glasses although immediately upon returning to the US, where I could quickly see that eyeglasses such as the ones I had bought were becoming a 'trend,' it made me not want to wear them.

This is a photo of me in my hipster glasses the day that I purchased them in October 2007. I cringe when I look at this photo. I was proud of myself....being so stylish and unique. These feelings only later turned to crush me into hipsterdom when I returned to the US.

Hipsterdom (from urbandictionary.com)
Refers to the hierarchy within the sub-culture of hipsters.
Being a part of this hierarchy often has to do with 'being in the know': knowing what is popular at the moment with art, music and fashion. The hierarchy culminates into a top 1% of people who are what marketing companies refer to as the 'trend-setters', the people that define what's cool and that everyone else inevitably follows. Hipsterdom is generally confined to white people between the ages of 18 to 30, often middle class, often educated in Liberal Arts.

Why is it that following the trends and latest styles has become such a negative thing? It seems to apply to a subculture of people as well...not the massive followers...for example you can't go shopping at Abercrombie & Fitch and follow the latest trends at that store and be labeled as 'hipster.' It seems to surpass boundaries and to me, is almost undefinable. However, when I take a look at the following photo, I do agree that this can be labeled as 'hipster.' I think this boils down to the unnecessary accessories. The hats and scarves which serve no purpose for warmth, just merely for fashion's sake.



Have you ever been called a hipster? How did it make you feel?
What does hipster mean to you?

Valentine's Day

The dust is settling from Valentine's Day. I was on the subway today heading to class when a throng of teenagers entered the subway car with fistfuls of balloons and flowers and overstuffed teddy bears and hearts all over the place declaring the words "I LOVE YOU." It is nearly impossible to dodge from the hype of Valentine's Day. Beginning just after New Years, all of the stores begin to stuff the shelves with heart shaped boxes of chocolates, red and pink stuffed animals, a gigantic selection of cards and images of flowers. Flowers, flowers, flowers. Valentines day seems to be more of a holiday for businesses rather than for the people.

Unlike other holidays, there is a prevalent "popularity contest" on Valentine's Day. In the consumerist society that we live in, it becomes a competition of who can buy more, and who can get more gifts. Especially in middle school, the day seems to turn into this competition and popularity contest. I overheard a girl on the subway exclaim, "Jeremy got me like six boxes of chocolates and this big stuffed animal," to which her friend lamented, "Derek just gave me flowers."

At this age when it is so utterly important to fit in amongst your peers, a day like Valentine's Day could be doomsday to those without a significant other.

dissection of advertisement

Been seeing these ads on the subway recently...not paying too much attention to them until today when I went to observe the collection of the ads on the Communication Arts webpage.

What they have written about the ads is quite different than some of my thoughts. http://www.commarts.com/exhibit/new-york-lottery-campaign.html. They write, "Paying homage to past Lottery campaigns, that inspire fantasizing about winning it big, it's a humorous look at the decadent life someone might live after hitting the jackpot."

I don't find the ads too humorous. These ads reinforce opulent wealth. The amount of wealth that one would inherit from winning the lottery could never sustain the extravagance that these ads display.

These ads arrive during the time where we are all aware of the Occupy Wall Street movement and the focus on the 1%...where this ad plays on that, bypassing the 1% to become the .001%.

The ads also associate the winning of the lottery to the "richness" of "whiteness," as all figures in the ads are white.
What is unfortunate is that someone would mimic the spending of their winnings based on these advertisements.

Its similar to showing an image of someone irrevocably drunken at a bar for an advertisement for alcohol.
The ads look as though they are an everyday photograph, something that is attainable.

interesting parts from readings about language and representation

In the readings for my class, this paragraph struck me.

"He goes on to point out that the word 'barbarian' is simply the Greek word for foreigner (1987: 2); it does not necessarily imply anything negative. And yet, 'every man calls barbarous anything he is not accustomed to; it is indeed the case that we have no other criterion of truth or right-reason than the example and form of the opinions and customs of our own country' (1987: 8). Those opinions and customs are embedded in and expressed in language. So as Montaigne shows, the word for 'barbarian' that in fact means simply 'not Greek' becomes a signal fo everything 'outside', everything 'not like us'. It sets in place an idea of a world structured along lines of inclusion (us) and exclusion (barbarians); of that which is reasonable set against that which is reduced to an unassimilable otherness.

It is also, of course, an example of the capacity of language to fit us to the dominant local views of the world, and to (re)produce the world for us.

- J. Webb, Understanding Representation

Language is delicate and has been shaped over the years by the societies in which we live. It is interesting to think of the original meaning of barbarian and how it has been formed over the years to become something quite negative in nature over our association of dealing with things foreign to oneself.

Foucault considered that human subjects are produced and not simply born. Insisted that there could be no "essential tendencies" because human subjectivity is entirely constructed. Language is an excellent example of this.

Words relate to some more than others. In my class, a student brought up the poignant example of stand-up comedy. Some people may get the jokes while others are left not laughing because the language is either foreign to them or the very material of the comedy act may be directed toward them as a race or societal standing.

MEN WORKING

There is an inherent sexism in construction signage. This was taken on a walk the other day in the Upper West Side of NYC. We pass signs like this all the time without hesitating to wonder about them.

After many years, the construction industry has begun to stop excluding women from its workforce although the signage seems to
fall short of this change. What are the repercussions of such signage? It becomes a known...something that we walk past without acknowledging. It becomes complacently accepted.

From the site, workforceofwomen.org, an almost identical sign was seen and posted about in Washington DC, saying the following, "Springtime is peak tourist season in Washington, DC, and people from across the country and the world flock to see the capitol of a free and progressive society. Unfortunately, these Men Working signs do not reflect the U.S. ideal of freedom and equality, and it would make our nation look much better if these sexist signs changed."

I couldn't agree more.

the beginning

Everything I see throughout the day is a part of my visual culture.