Illocutionary force minus the force

As your host has mentioned on a number of occasions before, he relies on taking a couple of trains to commute to his office. Frequently, in the course of waiting to change trains in the morning, he stops at the Burger King in the station to get a carton of orange juice, and if he's feeling hungry, an order of BK's not-at-all-good-for-you french toast sticks.. This morning, as with many others, the same dialogue played out:

SC: One orange juice and an order of french toast sticks, please.
Cashier: For here, or to go?
SC: For here, please.
Cashier: OK, your total is (X). [exchange of money, passage of time]
Cashier: [puts order in bag] Here you go.
SC: [shrugs]

It's not that the store doesn't have any trays. It's not even the case that the cashier has a pathological aversion to handling the trays. It's just that in this particular context, the question "for here or to go?" is only part of a script (not necessarily even one mandated by the restaurant, just socially). It's more efficient for the cashier to simply put everything into bags, which lets her move faster than trying to pay attention to what the customers actually asked her to do with each order. If she didn't go through the motion of asking, though, customers might be more annoyed by the disruption of the routine than they are by the matter of whether or not their request was actually acted on.

This same thing happens in other commercial contexts. In many grocery stores, when the bagger starts handling your order, they'll just start putting things in plastic bags, and mutter "plastic OK?", hoping that the customer will just ignore the usual dialogue, again because plastic bags are much more convenient for the task at hand. Occasionally, SC is moved to enough peevishness to wait for them to put in a few items and then say, "I'll take paper, thanks", but only if the bagger is acting especially lazy.

Even in social contexts where people are speaking as equals, and not as customer/employee or some other formal relationship, there are plenty of exchanges where it's a mistake to respond to a request literally. When somebody says "how are you?", the last thing they actually want to hear about is that you put in 15 hours at the office yesterday and your goldfish just died ([these are not actually biographical details of SC, at least not recently -- ed.]). They want to hear "fine", "good" or some other short, positive response. Of course, the degree to which this is true varies by relationships -- the people SC happens to see on the train platform each morning are more likely to prefer a short, information-free response than Mrs. SC.

So the next time you feel like nobody's listening, just remember -- they're only doing it because they're trying to serve you. Or at least it's nice to tell yourself so.

Comments

[Rhosgobel/Radagast]

Great examples of how pre-programmed most social exchanges are. I thought I'd add one:

My SO and I regularly buy gallons of milk at the grocery store. Said gallons come in plastic containers with easy-to-use handles conveniently built in. However, baggers at the supermarket seem to love to put individual gallons into individual plastic bags, which both wastes a bag and is far less convenient to carry. Whenever we buy milk the same scenario plays out:

Bagger: Plastic ok?
Radagast: Yes, but don't bag the milk.
Bagger: [Starts putting things into bags.]
Radagast: [Waits for the inevitable]
Bagger: [Starts bagging milk]
Radagast: I said please don't bag the milk.
Bagger: What?

Sadly, this usually ends either with the bagger removing the milk from the bag and throwing away the bag, or just putting the bagged milk in the cart.

The only way my SO and I have found to stop this cycle is to grab the milk immediately after it's scanned and put it into the cart ourselves.

[Rachel]

At most stores I've been to, they don't even ask "paper or plastic?" They just start putting stuff into plastic bags unless you stop them. I've never heard any cashier say "plastic ok?" Maybe it's a geographical thing.

[Blinger]

Here in Korea when you buy anything, no matter how small you get a plastic bag. Seriously, if it is hot outside and blinger is sweating up a storm goes into a store to buy a canned coke and a novelty ice cream it comes in a bag.

when I say no bag, the shopkeeper has a perplexed look on their face.

p.s. I thought this post was going to have something to do with Luke Skywalker.