Posted by Izzy Lewis on Monday, May 15, 2017 in 2017 Blog post.

The place of my observation is a little alimentari shop on Corso Ruggero. Outside the shops, tourists and locals alike enter and leave stores. An elderly man leans on a wall, scratching his head and watching the crowds.

Meanwhile, inside the shop there are two workers: a woman and a man. The man works behind the meat and cheese counter, is tall, and has dark hair and eyes. The woman is a little shorter and has lighter hair, and works the register near the front of the shop. There is no clear dynamic between the two; although the man looks younger than the woman. For about ten minutes, the man behind the counter has a conversation with a bald, friendly looking man. Both men seem to lean in near each other while talking. The man behind the counter strongly gestures with his hands to make points while speaking in a friendly tone. The other man nods his head often and moves in and out of the space next to the counter. The men continue to speak even as customers (who are tourists) wait, and it is not until they are finished that the man addresses the customers’ meat and cheese orders.

In the front of the shop, a woman holding several bags is talking with the register lady, in a conversation that is about her plans for the day. After they both say farewell in the form of “Ciao!,” a tourist walks into the shop. She looks around and sees the woman, and then mimes brushing her teeth because she is looking for a toothbrush. The woman at the counter says no, and the tourist goes on her way.

The most common customers at this time are elderly ladies. In a particular case, one lady with a brown shirt walks in and moves towards the counter, where the counter man silently hands her some kind of meat or cheese neatly wrapped, no questions. The woman behind the counter greets her and they have a silent, slower-paced conversation, until she eventually leaves. A common thread in all the interactions with the elderly is respect and quieter conversation. In America, conversation is usually the same volume regardless of age, sometimes even louder for those who have hearing problems. However, in this shop the man and woman seem to know the needs of their common customers before they even enter. The man behind the counter, who was more aggressive with the other man, almost bends to the woman when giving her food.

No one spends more than 10 minutes at a time in the shop. Most spend less than 5, especially if they are regulars. With tourists, conversation is obviously more stilted, less about the life of the customer and more about the things being purchased. Locals are approached, like the elderly lady with the meat, while tourists do the approaching, like with the toothbrush mime.

In the shop, conversation is used as a route of discussion, respect, and friendly aggression. With locals, the lines between business and friendship are virtually nonexistent. It would be interesting to see interactions with younger locals, like teenagers, or even the dynamic in the winter when tourism is not as rampant.

The shop demonstrates two sides of the Cefalù community: the locals and the tourists. Both are important to the town in different ways, but the locals are the ones who understandably have deeper and closer interactions. A common thread in my observations was respect for the elderly customers over others. Another is the way that the shop workers (or owners) have found a way to balance the tourists that filter in and out, and the locals that they get to know better with every day.