Social Observation (Lecture Note)

Social Observation Introduction- This paper will conduct a qualitative research to observe the behavior of an immigration services office for four hours on two consecutive days during the afternoon starting at 1:00pm. This observation will be done inside the office as I’m one of the employees there and I play a big role in that office being one of the interpreters who work with the immigration services office. The interaction will be with two groups of people, the clients from the refugees and coworkers who work with me in the same office. I used the observation method to gather the information regarding the interactions that are happening between the workers and the clients and at the same time I was observing the interactions and group work between my coworkers the themselves. The office was simply not very big in size, but at the same time it was well organized where you can help the clients and get help from other coworkers when needed, it consists of five cubical offices that the interpreters use and four other office rooms for the manager and other workers that are higher than the interpreters. I arrived at the office at 12:50pm to start preparing my office and be ready ahead to take notes from what I’m observing to in the office, during that time I noticed that there were two Congolese people, a man and his wife sitting with the Congolese interpreter and she was helping them with some of the online applications regarding a job they wanted to apply for. Those couples have come to the United States seven months ago and they’ve been trying so hard to learn some English, so they can work to provide what is necessary to live for them and their four young kids. Later on that day and by 2:00pm, all my coworkers were in the office ready to help their clients and also at that time I had an appointment with a client, so when he arrived I started working with him and while I was doing that one of my coworkers asked for help with some paperwork that she didn’t know how to fill correctly, I had two choices at that time, either I help and ask my client to wait or ask her to wait until I finish working with the client but, since our manager always asks us to always help each other and work as team so I had, to ask my client to wait so I can tell my coworker how to do that paperwork that she has, thankfully, it was a simple and didn’t take me much time to do it and after it I went back to my client to continue with our appointment. During the appointment, my clients phone started ringing and without any further notice he answered the phone and started talking, maybe he didn’t that he has violated a formal norm by answering his phone and acting inadequately to maintain the connection between me and him, that was not the first time that this thing happens, I also saw it happening with my coworkers while they were working with their clients. After being done with my appointment, I saw a lot of workers from other offices come into our office and use the office printer and many of them were having problem with using it because it needs a little bit of time to get used to it but, what some of them didn’t know is that you need to put the password first before you can start using the printer, shortly thereafter, my manager came out of her office and asked the person that was trying to use the printer whether if he’s having a problem with it, after she helped him with using the printer she came up to me to tell that the guy who was trying to use the printer is a worker from the office next to ours in the same floor and he told her that their printer stopped working and they had to use ours to finish their work and when I asked whether If they are allowed to do that thing or not, she answered with “Yes” because we’re working in the same network as theirs. On the second day, I went to the office half an hour earlier to help my manager preparing for the employment class where they teach the refugees about working in the United States and how to search for jobs too. After completing the preparations, I went back to my cubicle and noticed that some of my coworkers came late to work and sat in their cubicles and started playing with their phones and they weren’t feeling that they were doing something wrong, as if they knew that my manager would be busy with her class and she will not be noticing them coming late to work and not doing their job correctly as they’re supposed to. After my manager was done with the employment class she came back to our office around 2:30pm and she asked us about the work that we have done while she was out of the office and she gave us some new work that needed to be done at that day. While my manger was talking to us, out of a sudden a family came into the office and said that they needed help and they are new in town, the family was from the middle east and since I speak Arabic I had to talk to them to understand the situation more, so we can be able to help them. After talking to the family, I explained to them an important matter that they need to make an appointment with us by calling on the office phone before they come to our office and that’s because we’re not always available to work with the clients. That occurs frequently whenever we have new families coming from either a different state or from a different country. The observations the I did during my time at the office and the interactions the behaviors that witnessed shows that there is a conflict, even when it comes to a small that has few workers, and because we’re few workers then there will always be a competition that will drive me and my coworkers to always do better and try to impress everyone that works with us in the same place. I also realized how the workers are willing to their clients even though sometimes the clients from the refugees still need more time to adapt to the environment and the culture that they live in and that’s why my manager always watching us closely to make sure that everyone is doing their job correctly and make sure that our clients are always satisfied after they come to us.