Pow wow: Learning Unexpectedly

Yesterday I volunteered to work at the Pow wow Sales Booth. I didn't expect to learn anything new because I used to be a cashier and am fairly familiar with that repetoire of skills.

The Space

The booth, however, was set up differently than a regular cashiering station. There are four or more people working behind a counter, which is open on 3 of the four sides. This actually allowed much more interaction between the volunteers and the customers. Normally, a cashier deals with one customer at a time and there is a linear progression, with pressure to hurry because another customer is waiting. The combination of openness and multiple volunteers/ cashiers was conducive for dialogue between customers and volunteers and within each group.

What was Learned

• Pow wow specific information was shared between repeat visitors and first timers- changes in designs, services offered, and which events were the best to attend or had the most crowd interaction. Previous volunteers who were now off-duty felt comfortable stopping by and giving advice or a few pointers. I was able to learn a lot about the behind the scenes implementation of Pow wow and the way that services are organized, both from previous volunteers and from the current volunteers. I don't think this would have occurred if I hadn't been able to easily change my particular "spot" behind the counter in order to interact with all of the volunteers or to ask for clarification about a particular comment they made.

• There was also a degree of non Pow wow informational exchange. Customers felt comfortable asking about our backgrounds, and at some points engaged in extended discussions about life as an undergraduate, housing, and abroad programs. A parent asking about undergraduate programs (her daughter is a freshman), told me about new programs being implemented at Stanford that I hadn't previously known about.

Update

After going back over my notes, I found Dan's anecdote about a fish market in Seattle, and it reminded me of the Pow wow cashiering station. While the set up wasn't as good as at the fish market, the openness of the booth facilitated interaction across a more diverse group of participants (customers AND cashiers).