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Norm Break

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Norm Break
Mitesh Patel Soc 1113.007

I was given the chance to break a social norm at multiple local grocery stores. This privilege is not acceptable or common throughout the world while performing rare unusual behavior. My interest was to skip through aisles while whistling in a variety of grocery stores. I was interested in seeing reactions and confusion on this act. Many people were shocked to witness what was happening and were curious why this action was performed. Skipping through the aisles was scary and made me nervous. After I performed my social breach 23 times, I accomplished a successful act and had strange but interesting feedbacks. Wal-Mart was the first store I broke my social norm. The first time I broke my norm, I realized that I did not whistle and a person came up to me and requested me to explain why I would even think to do skip through aisles.
I was highly nervous on my first trial attempt to skip through the aisle and was concerned if I would possibly make a mistake doing this. I came to a conclusion to skip through the drinks aisle because it was the most clustered and would have received the most reactions from people. I skipped through the aisle rather slowly because I didn’t know how to pace myself to where I could interpret their reactions quick enough. There were approximately 8 people in the aisle and had to make sure I wouldn’t laugh or make an unnecessary mistake. Also in the aisle, were two little kids that saw me skip through the aisle while laughing really hard and eventually asked their parents if they could skip around through the store. I also got hysterical feedback from an elder couple as they approached me and first questioned why I was skipping through the aisle. I told them I was given a promotion from my manager at Blockbuster, so I was excited but also happy. Another person in the aisle was extremely rude and called me an inappropriate name and seemed to find my act unacceptable and childish. When breaking this

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