Profs & Pints Napa: Our Lifelines Across Counters

Profs and Pints Napa presents: “Our Lifelines Across Counters,” an exploration of the unsung social and psychological benefits of routine interactions with retail and service-industry employees, with Mara Adelman, former professor of communications at Seattle University and Northwestern University, co-author of Communicating Social Support, and longtime scholar of superficial relationships.

[Tickets available only online, at https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/napa-lifelines-across-counters .]

When a store clerk asks “How may I help you?” the real answer is a complicated one. There’s a reason why the theme song of the bar-based sitcom Cheers, “Where everybody knows your name,” resonated with the American public. While we might not have given the matter much thought, most of us socially and psychologically depend a lot on the superficial relationships in our lives.

Profs and Pints is bringing you an opportunity to appreciate and improve routine interactions with baristas, beauticians, salesclerks, and other retail and service employees by exploring just how much brief encounters with them mean to our sense of community and well-being.

The speaker, Mara Adelman, developed a lifelong interest in taking superficial relationships seriously early in life, while working as a bartender and a waiter. In embarking on a scholarly career in interpersonal communication, she encountered what she calls “the tyranny of intimacy,” the focus on close relationships with family, friends, and lovers that dominated popular culture’s depictions of human interactions and drove most of the major research in her field.

Dr. Adelman sought to direct her energies elsewhere and explore weaker ties that, while pervasive, often are slighted in terms of recognition of their unique contributions to our lives. She studied our encounters with people in the service and retail professions, unpacking questions related to the context, role expectations, and the networks of contacts involved.

She’ll discuss her findings in a talk that will combine research, theory, film clips, poetry, and audience engagement to call attention to the complex and subtle ways in which our superficial encounters provide social support. We’ll consider the vital role such encounters play in the lives of people unable to obtain needed professional support for reasons related to cost, accessibility, and social stigma, as well as for people who for whatever reason have found people with whom they have close relationships less supportive than hoped.

We’ll look at how our encounters with retail and service industry workers embed us in the community, diversify our social networks, and provide us with new information. We’ll consider how we sometimes feel especially free to share personal information with such people precisely because they are outside our primary social circle. We’ll look at how our interactions with such workers can carry costs for them, especially if they’re untrained in dealing with whatever serious issues we bring up.

Dr. Adelman’s talk will leave you with a richer understanding of even the most fleeting encounters and a deeper appreciation of the unsung heroes in our lives. (Advance tickets: $13.50 plus processing fees. Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Doors open at 5:30 and the talk begins at 6:30.)

Image by Canva.