The other day my college mates and I drove into a cafeteria and ordered fries and some soda. I found it fun picking and eating the fries with my fingers. This act is considered the breaking of a food norm since principles dictate that chips should be eaten with either forks or picks. Because this norm is not noted down anywhere it is considered an informal rule.
Usually, such an action would not worry me in person because it is not like I was breaking a legal law. I mean it is just having fun being socially different for a while. I did not mind the act. After we were served and started handpicking our food, we received a few glances and strange stares from the customers and a few of the waiters around us. Such an experience feels cool since it is an act of being freely independent of social restraints. We could not stop laughing at breaking away from societal limitations (Witt, 2016).
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Typically such an action ignites this feeling of independence in me because I get to realize that I do not need to all the time to conform my behaviors to given standards. It is like getting a break or a day off from set standards. I felt free and limitless. However, not everybody thinks the same about breaking free from norms (Witt, 2016). Though it was a popular café, one of the waiters approached us and advised us to use the provided forks since we were tainting the image of the cafeteria with our behavior. That explained why we received numerous disgusted stares around us.
Not that the management cared for our action, it was more concerned with upholding its reputation as a classy institution. It could not bear seeing the customers disgusted by our actions. As such, it forced us to conform to the expectations by using the provided forks apologetically. Such an experience opens your eyes to just how much the society upholds specific behaviors and values (Witt, 2016). I learned that while in person I may not care about norms, my actions impact the set societal image. Some of our actions may not necessarily affect us directly, but they have an impact on how other people view certain aspects.
References
Witt, J. (2016). SOC 2016 (4th ed., pp. 124-129). New York: McGraw-Hill Education.
