I tend to frequent the same coffee shop and over the course of a week I noticed 3 people who brought their lunch with them and ate it without buying anything – not even a drink.
Mainly what I noticed was that my instant reaction was to interpret their behaviour (I wasn’t a fan!). But as I’m working on observing myself in the moment (see last month’s post) I then started to think about context – these were all people who looked in their early 20’s (they probably have a different worldview than me), the coffee shop was a Starbucks (our relationship to a multinational company is probably different to that of a small family business) and none of the staff told them to buy anything (.. so it must be OK?).
The reason I mention this is because I’ve since discovered that there’s another piece of very important context I wasn’t aware of. Apparently Starbucks have had to provide clarity on their customer policy after recent controversy and although you can eat your own food if you’re a paying customer, unless your being disrespectful you’re unlikely to be asked to leave even if you don’t buy anything. So in the eyes of those this impacts the most, it’s fine to munch away!
A random story I know but a good lesson in the importance of taking time to understand the wider contexts of behaviour. As humans, judging people quickly (friend or foe?) is an evolutionary go-to that isn’t always useful and we can (and should) do more to first understand context before we respond or react to others (particularly if we feel they’ve done something wrong or annoyed us!).
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