Starbucks - This morning I went to Starbucks for a coffee. I found myself doing what most everyone else was doing. Standing off to the left near the miscellaneous items for sale waiting for my coffee to go. I would say about six other people were doing the same, making this the trend of my TAO. However, one drink order was called out and someone rose from a table to collect their coffee before leaving. This one person, as the anomaly of my TAO, is unique because she chose to sit and weight for her to-go coffee while the rest of stood, allowing people who intended to stay the seats we would otherwise have taken up in our waiting. The anomaly woman was in her 40s so maybe she had some condition where she couldn't stand. But really, anyone is entitled to the seats. Having Starbucks signify that seats are only for staying customers would be problematic in that people would probably get upset. Also people seem to be figuring it out on their own for the most part. My observation from this trend would be that most people waiting off toward the side at least feigned interest in some of the items like coffee cups, teas, and other nic-nacs.
Starbucks Orders - Another trend from my time at Starbucks this morning were the orders of women. When I was there, those waiting with me were women between the ages of 25-50 roughly. I noticed that 5 of the six of them order "skinny" coffee variations, such as latte or cappuccino. I believe they all ordered them skinny because women are generally more concerned with their caloric intake than are men and also because Starbucks baristas call out publicly the orders so there is perhaps a stigma that is perceived by the orderers that they will be associated with being considerate of their physiques to the others in the Starbucks when their order is in fact called. As if to say, "Yes that is MY skinny vanilla latte because I care how I look". The anomaly in this trend was someone who ordered a green tea drink. I'm not sure if green tea can be skinny-itized but the fact that she deviated from the skinny coffee-variation trend is significant when considering that we were at a coffeehouse. Perhaps she has an aversion to coffee and didn't think she needed caffeine until she got to driving and then impulsively stopped at the Starbucks. My observation in this trend is that several of the women appeared to be moms as I know them because they were between 30 and 50 and had some mommish clothes on like tennis/running gear like I've observed them to do. (This Starbucks is on West Paces Ferry).
Facebook -
A trend in the Facebook world is that when it's a friend's birthday, people post on that person's Facebook wall to say something to the effect of "Happy birthday!" Today is one of my friend's birthdays and I checked out the wall to see if the trend persisted and if there were any anomalies. I was not let down. The trend continued and there were myriad birthday wishes on my friend's wall. And in the midst of the birthday wishes? An anomaly. Instead of a birthday wish was a link to a food recipe. I found this interesting as it was almost in lieu of a birthday wish. Perhaps the person who posted the recipe had an aversion to post birthday wishes and was implying such a wish with the link, maybe he was so obtuse that he didn't realize all the other birthday wishes around his post. I don't know, but I found the anomaly funny. An observation was that my friend had 980 friends and I counted only 23 birthday wishes.
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