An observational study of skilled memory in waitresses

Abstract

A two-phase observational study was done on skilled waitresses as they served lunch orders in a Manhattan restaurant. Three months of participant observation provided a job description which characterized the skilled use of memory by waitresses. A second set of observations tracked the handling of orders for five confederate customers, and looked at ways in which waitresses had to reorganize information in order to do their job quickly and accurately. The data revealed that waitresses sort-order information into different organizational configurations to match locations in the restaurant, and that they adaptively utilized these configurations in the flow of their activity.Skilled memory is a term used by Chase and Ericsson (1981) to refer to a memory system developed after lengthy practice, in which storage and retrieval operations are considerably speeded up, and working memory capacity for a particular knowledge base is increased. Several lines of research converge in this model, which owes much to the information processing view of humans as limited capacity symbol manipulators (Siegler, 1983). Working memoryOne line of research is the work of Baddeley and Hitch (1974) and Baddeley (1981), who used the term 'working memory' to incorporate the notion of a workspace area in the memory system with more general notions of the role of temporary storage in information processing. Baddeley described working memory as a system with three components or subsystems: the central executive, the articulatory loop, and the visuospatial scratch pad. The articulatory loop resembled a tape loop of limited duration and was used for verbal material. The visuospatial scratch pad was used to visualize spatial information. The central executive was originally described (Baddeley and Hitch, 1974) as the component responsible for control processes, decision-making, encoding and storage. Baddeley (198 1) subsequently said that the central executive is more like an attentional system, and 'any model of working memory also has to be a model of attention'.Baddeley's work, as Ericsson (1985) has pointed out, is in agreement with Newel1 and Simon's work on information processing which posits different kinds of memory

Work activity in food service: The significance of customer relations, tipping practices and gender for preventing musculoskeletal disorders

“…A method more readily acceptable to all concerned would probably be participant observation. This method has been used to reveal techniques for memorizing orders (Stevens, 1993) and for resisting customers' attempts to belittle servers (Tibbals, 2007).…”

An Examination of the State of Workplace Learning at the End of the 20th Century

“…This learning includes the development of problem-solving skills (Beach, 1993;Martin & Scribner, 1991;Scribner & Sachs, 1991;Stevens, 1993). They also found that the cognitive activities of workers involve the integration of their goal-directed behaviors and environmental affordances.…”

“…Their work has involved the use of both ethnographic research techniques (e.g., controlled observations) and simulated experiments. They have used these techniques to discover the cognitive functioning that occurs in such work activities as bartending (Beach, 1993), being a waitress (Stevens, 1993) and learning the ropes in a stockroom (Scribner & Sachs, 1991).…”