Meal Time Activities

One question I will attempt to answer by making some observations is: What do people do while they are sitting down to a meal?  The obvious answer would be "eating", but I want to observe what they are doing in addition to the actual eating of food, such as studying or using a cell phone or socializing with others.  As I got to the place I chose to observe I noticed a few things right away.  One, it was not as busy as I had hoped, even with it being lunchtime (12:30 pm), primarily due to it being the weekend and two, most of the people were just passing through so it was difficult to get enough details written down in the time they were in the immediate vicinity.  Of the people that stayed around in the time I was there, there were two groups of three people and two groups of two people: in the first group of three were two males and one female, the second group had three males, the first group of two were one male and one female, and the other group was two females.  There were also five people that were just passing through the area.

In the first group of three, one of the males and the female, who looked like a couple, were engaged in conversation while the other male, I will call him the third wheel, was using his cell phone.  I wasn't close enough to the couple to hear the subject matter of the conversation, but it seemed light because the third wheel would occasionally insert his own comments.  The other group of three were engaged in apparently a hilarious story because of the animated nature of the speaker. They looked like they worked together because they all had the same uniforms on and were possibly on a lunch break.  The first group of two had the look of a couple on a lunch date and were engaged in quiet conversation with each other.  The last group that I observed were two ladies who only spoke to each other occasionally and were mostly on their cell phones when not eating.

I was not able to get much information about the people passing by other than how they were dressed and whether they were on their phones at the time.  There were three females: one had yoga pants and a tank top on, the others had shorts and t-shirts on and all three were using their cell phones.  Of the two males, one was wearing jeans and one was wearing khaki shorts and both were wearing t-shirts and the one wearing shorts was using his phone.  They all had bags of food or drinks in their hands and were heading in the direction of the parking lot.

During the time I was there, the group of three males left, presumably to go back to work, and were soon followed by the group of two females, possibly for the same reason.  About 20 or 25 minutes later the couple left, but the group with the third wheel was still there when I left.