Originally, our group had planned to compare the Acropolis staff interactions on both busy and "dead" days. The first day we had planned to go in was a game day Saturday. We knew we didn't want to try a Thursday, Friday, or Saturday night both because of the general mayhem and the fact that the cooks wouldn't be able to work. However, we had not adequately anticipated the chaos that would ensue at the Acropolis during an Iowa football game. When we had spoken to the owner, he had given us the go-ahead to basically do whatever we wanted since he had not paid especially close attention to the plan we had handed him.
We had called in to attempt to speak with the person who was going to be managing at the time and had found out his name but had been unsuccessful in contacting him. That Saturday morning continued to try to call the on-shift manager so that we could explain beforehand why we would be walking in with a video camera and tape recorder. The employees who answered the phone kept telling us that they would have the manager call me back in ten minutes. After several sets of "ten minutes", it was nearly noon and the entire group would be arriving at the Acropolis soon, so we headed there without having contacted the manager.
Once we arrived, we realized what a silly idea it had been to plan to do our project during very busy hours. The bar was crammed with football fans who did not respond very well to our weaving through them wearing a huge backpacks and carrying recording equipment (i.e. cameras, tape recorders, etc.) After attempting to find room enough in the restaurant to set up and failing, we retreated to a bench sitting outside the door of the establishment. None of us were looking forward to going back in, but we tried to be calm about it. We went back in to try and find the manager and let him know who we were. After asking around, he was pointed out and Jane made several attempts at talking with him. However, because of the current pace at which he was working and the stress around him, he did not seem to listen to our presentation. After returning to the outside,we all decided that our research would not be very effective at that time, as we could neither talk with the manager nor find a place to even stand and observe. Furthermore, we did not want to start off our relationship with the staff there on a bad note by making a nuisance of ourselves on a busy day. We thus decided to shift our focus to the interactions between the staff and their influence on perceptions of the establishment and the development of relationships within that establishment.
We came in on a fairly slow Wednesday night and had no trouble getting the manager to talk to us and help us out. We had called him before coming, so he was at least not surprised or confused to see us walk in. We had planned to have the cameras set up in the kitchen so that we could see out the "window" into the restaurant and record interactions. However, once we arrived we realized that both the kitchen and the window were too small for this to work. Andy and Josh ended up getting some footage of the kitchen, although they couldn't position the camera in the window.
Another problem which was inherent in our project is that it was impossible for us to actually put ourselves into the culture of the Acropolis staff. Since none of us are employees of the restaurant, we were unable to do the work/interaction with them, and thus had less ability to obscure our roles as observers. Even though this was a hindrance, in some ways it proved helpful because we got more concrete and direct information than we might have otherwise.