We’ll make this brief so we can jump right into the heated comments: an economist and her research assistants studied eight different Boston coffee shops and found that, on average, women had to wait about 20 seconds longer to be served. She controlled for drink types and the discrepancy remained. What’s more, “The delays facing women were larger when the coffee shop staff was all-male and almost vanished when the servers were all-female.”
There’s some speculation that the delays are caused by flirting, but the wait time increased the busier the shops became, which runs counter to any flirtation theory (assuming it’s more difficult to flirt acceptably when there’s a long line of people waiting to order).
Some unanswered questions: is Boston more chauvinistic or sexist than, say, Berkeley? What about a large city in the South? Do women take longer to order, even when they’re ordering the same drinks? We’ve noticed that at Starbucks, we tend to order coffee in, like, 3 seconds, while our communal Consumerist girlfriend takes upwards of half a minute while she weighs her options, gives precise instructions, or makes small talk. But of course that doesn’t explain why an all-female staff nearly removes the wait time.
In general, the study seems to imply, you’re likely to get the best service if you’re an older, handsome, white (or at least non-black) male:
There is also evidence that blacks wait longer than whites, the young wait longer than the old, and the ugly wait longer than the beautiful. But these effects are statistically not as persuasive.
The question now is, if current coffee shops discriminate, does that open an opportunity for competitors to come in and steal business by offering better service? One problem is that the discrimination is trivial enough that consumers might be willing to overlook it—if they notice it in the first place.
…a rival coffee shop would have to be very close indeed to justify a trip aimed at avoiding a 20-second wait. Even coffee retailing isn’t that competitive.
“Waiting for Good Joe” [Slate]
(Photo: Getty)
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@metoometoo: That makes a lot more sense (although it seems they didn’t do a very good job of teaching them how to conduct field research, given the way the study was conducted). I agree with you – the real mystery is how on earth did they convince a Slate writer that this was a worthwhile study to report on as if it was conducted by real scientists? Or did the writer just randomly come across it and write about it on their own?
I’m sorry, but when I am helping a nice, beautiful woman (or when I did…phone support now), I take my time to make sure everything gets done right. Not too long so that she gets mad, but long enough so that I don’t ruin her experience or make her mad. And do it well enough to score points.
Why do I need to score points? I’ve got a girlfriend, will never see this girl again, and genuinely am not really interested in nooner trysts. Because I am a guy. I need to work on these skills to survive.
@upokyin: I hope they use protection if they share her.
Economist desperately tries to grab headlines with pointless study!!! News at 11!!!
@BigNutty: My guess is an average-looking person sitting in a corner sipping a coffee with a newspaper and/or laptop on the table along with a notebook wouldn’t draw attention, especially if they were out of the easy line of sight of anyone walking toward the counter and not where they’d draw the attention of the staff. It’s easy to look like a college type in a place frequented by college types, and no one would think anything of the notebook or even the stopwatch or other timing device that was used to record wait times.
To really do it right the researchers would send both men and women to try to even out any accidental bias brought on by the observers themselves or any bias resulting from the staff knowing that male or female patrons were sitting at tables.
@PaulMorel: Personally I see this as more of a psychology or anthropology study, and even the most pointless-seeming research can have surprising ties to other research. Why and how we treat others the way we do is a pretty interesting subject, actually, and it never occurred to me to think that I might be waiting 20 seconds longer for my order than the guy in front of me might be. I now find myself wondering what the cause is, and if the same root cause might turn up elsewhere.
Of course, I’m geeky and I love science, so I find this interesting when someone else might find it silly.
@12monkeys: You beat me to it. To get an order filled at a bar you have to look like you have money and/or are or are with someone very good looking. Otherwise, forget it. You can make waving motions, attempt to yell over people talking or music, or in general plant yourself in their direct line of sight and STILL not get a drink order taken.
@krom: It’s a stock photo. Woman drinking coffee.
A couple of people missed some key points:
The delay is statistically significant, but short. It’s a real difference. It’s a value judgment to say whether or not the difference matters–something science can never do.
They controlled by drink type. Therefore, it doesn’t matter if a woman orders a frou-frou latte with all the trimmins’. A man ordering the same thing gets served faster.
This study is fascinating, and I can only wonder why we get these results. There are lots of possible confounding factors, like the attire of the customer (business suit? t-shirt and jeans?), location of the business (downtown vs. neighborhood coffeeshop), type of business (indie shop vs. starbucks vs (in Boston) dunkin donuts), etc.
I don’t think anyone believes that this discrimination is the result of overt policy.
@deserthiker: I’d like to point out that a large portion of the population (gays and lesbians) is protesting discrimination in their abiility to serve in the millitary. Some groups are willing to object to discrimination, even when it benefits them.
I hate seeing everyone protesting “bogus” science when they haven’t even read the study. You aren’t going to find all the info in the popular media, so don’t assume the study was flawed because something isn’t mentioned.
@rdm24: I read it. It’s linked right from the article. I still think it’s very poorly designed from a methodological standpoint, doesn’t properly control for all the possibly relevant factors, doesn’t use a large enough sample size to draw the conclusions that they do, and doesn’t provide any evidence that discrimination has anything to do with the delay, even if it’s real.
@johnva: Um, duh. It’s an undergrad class project! Not even a thesis, just a class project for an undergrad econ class. Not a sociology or psych or anthro class.
@metoometoo: That’s what I said – I agreed with you that that explained it. It’s not a real scientific study (though the Slate writer kind of presented it as if it was).
I was replying to @rdm24, who said that we shouldn’t assume it is flawed just from the Slate article. It’s obviously not a real publication-quality scientific study if you bother to read it.
@savvy999: “how about the simple explanation that maybe male workers in Boston are just generally more incompetent than female workers?”
That’s my assumption. I’m not sure what they mean by “being served” because my assumption was how long it took to actually get around to placing your order, the part of the transaction I hate most. But if they’re talking about the actual making of the drinks, and they say that when female workers were present the delay ended, then I would say the problem is in the workers, not the customers.
They do say they took different drink order types into account, so saying women order more complicated drinks might not be the answer. Who knows, maybe there’s a delay because they’re making the drink better because they think women are better tippers?
@johnva: Whoops, sorry you’re right. I didn’t connect that you were the same person who made the earlier comment. I was really just responding in general to all the comments continuing to criticize it as though it were a real scientific study.
@meiran: Could there be a belief among baristas that women customers are more particular and more likely to complain about their drink if it’s not just right? — therefore they take extra care to do their drinks right.
Of course… this whole study seems to suggest that the person making the drinks is aware of the gender of the person making the coffee. In my experience at a typical SB, that’s not necessarily the case unless you’re the only one at the counter. One person takes orders and maybe grabs things from the case, another does warming and maybe blended drinks, and then at least one other person makes the espresso drinks. It’s unlikely that if a man and a woman both order a venti nonfat latte that the person making the drinks will know which one is for a woman.
@BrianH: …said the guy reading The Consumerist…
This study must have been very well carried out to account for all possible variables. Yep. This was probably REALLY scientific like.