On Sun, 10 Oct 2010 07:01:29 -0700, Annette Taylor wrote: >[snip] >... His job is to take a HUGE pile of these glasses as people >deposit them into a barrel, exiting the previous show, and to >disentangle the pile and lay them out neatly on a table so that >people going into the show can just grab a pair and go on in. >The table is a half round and the glasses are laid out in a semi-circle, >about 3 deep, and then his tangled pile sits near the back, center. >As a person takes a pair of glasses his job is to disentangle a pair >and place it out on the perimeter for easy access. He emphasized >that this is a VERY large table, so that his tangled pile is quite far >away. He said that a person has to be at least 5'10" tall to reach >over to his pile. But if you are anticipating, well yes, he claims that >about 50% of the people would rather reach into the tangled pile >to grab glasses, rather than take the nicely laid out, easy access, >disentangled and neatly folded and placed glasses along the >edge of the table. >[snip] >Any ideas on this list on what is going on?
I'm not really sure what the student wants to do but what I think he needs to do is be more systematic in his observations. One potential answer may be available by thinking about the situation but one really needs to observe the situation. Consider some of the following questions/points: (1) Who attends these shows? Adults only or adults and children? (2) Implicit in what is said above, it would appear that adults reach over to get the unfolded glasses. Do children, short people, and the elderly with limited mobility tend to take the folded glasses on the edge or do they scamper atop the table to get the unfolded glasses (if that happened, one would really have a difficult explanation to develop). (3) If adults make up the bulk of the people who take the unfolded glasses, especially adults with children, perhaps they are just being polite. That is, they know that kids can only read so far and it would be a kindness to leave the easily accessible glasses to them and others who would have difficulty reaching. I admit that it has been a few decades since I was at a SeaWorld show and I was conflicted about watching the animals perform for the humans, so I have avoided this kind of venue ever since. -Mike Palij New York University [email protected] --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=5529 or send a blank email to leave-5529-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
