Grayson Phillips

Critical Incident Paper

Alison Bodkin
The Horrific Meal

This past summer, I attended a study abroad trip through JMU that was stationed in

Europe. Following the class, we took time to travel more over Europe including Barcelona,

Spain. During our time there we went to a restaurant that had decent prices and the waiter threw

in free drinks, we were sold. Consequently, when seated the expectations of the restaurant were

quite eerie. We were eventually lied to and had to pay for food we never ate/received. The

communication that took place went from friendly and convincing to hostile and unacceptable.

There are a lot of ways to look into this scenario, so we’ll look through the Expectancy

Violations Theory (EVT), and Relational Dialectics Theory (RED).

Upon finding the restaurants, we had one waiter in particular single us out. In RED,

“dynamic and unceasing struggle between discourses about interpersonal relationships” (Griffin,

Ledbetter, & Sparks 2019 p.132). The waiter gave a discourse which stated that we’d come if

we liked his presentation; authentic food, acceptable price, free drinks. Directly after being

seated the waiter simultaneously started asking us if we could review his restaurant, providing

him high ratings. That’s right, we were asked to give reviews when we hadn’t even received

drinks yet. Berger suggests, “that uncertainty drives people to reduce it” (Griffin et al. p.132).

This seemed very strange and out of the ordinary, so we suggested to him we would later in the

meal mainly because he was intrusive and was violating our personal space, which we’ll cover

later in EVT. We ordered food, then sat and conversed until our appetizers arrived. After

everyone took two bites we realized we had made a mistake. The explanation Baxter and Bakhtin

use in the chapter about discourses and the apple is exactly what we encountered. We were

presented an idea of an authentic Spanish meal, the apple, to then be given a meal that tasted like

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Critical Incident Paper

Alison Bodkin
rubber and wasn’t fully cooked, the apple pie. We brought the waiter over telling him that we’d

like to cancel the rest of our order and bring a check for the items we had already received.

When expressing this to the waiter he immediately went into panic mode telling us not to

worry that our main course was almost ready. He then mentioned if we didn’t one hundred

percent care for it, we could walk without paying the full bill. The waiter had a sense of

marginalized discourse, he was lacking the power over his restaurant, so he resorted to acting

upon dominant discourse, where he made it seem as if he had control. We eventually had enough

of the restaurant and indicated that we were unsatisfied and that we were going to be leaving

again, but that we’d pay for half, since we only received half. The waiter must have told the

other employees at the restaurant about our loss of appetite in the food as they had someone

stand right behind us, one stationed by the hostess, and someone in the street making sure that

we did not get up and leave. We were literally forced over to eat their horrible food, needless to

say our appetite had vanished.

This is where synchronic interplay came into work. We decided to voice the discourse we

thought we were going to be displayed with to the waiter. Marx who claims, “all dialect struggles

reach an inevitable monologue of final resolution” (Griffin et al., 2019 p.132). While we were

trying to communicate, the waiter had other ideas. We were verbally assaulted and one of us was

even grabbed and sat back into the seat for trying to leave. The conversation quickly turned from

us asking for the cheaper check into four separate waiters cursing and yelling at us to sit down

and eat their food. While three of us were eventually chased out, one was held back to pay the

entire bill, including three main meals that never arrived. It took a split second for our

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Critical Incident Paper

Alison Bodkin
conversation being a dialogue into a monologue of the waiters telling us how we’re just “stupid

ass Americans”. We eventually made it out of that hostile restaurant unharmed.

According to theorist Judee Burgoon on EVT, “The invisible, variable volume of space

surrounding an individual that defines individual’s preferred distance from others” (Griffin et al.,

2019 p.80). The acceptable social space between you and a stranger is, “four to twelve feet” our

waiter was about a foot from our faces (Griffin et al. p.80). Yes, waiters have to be close,

however, ours was rudely close. When we started to receive the harsh communication towards

us, we all went into a fight or flight mode. Our expectancy of the context, relationship, and

communicator of the restaurant had done a complete one-eighty. “The perceived positive or

negative value assigned to a breach of expectations, regardless of who the violator is” (Griffin et

al. p.85). The waiter breached our boundaries creating violation valence. As we tried to leave

they grabbed one of us holding him back unable to leave, this crossed the line. Unfortunately, to

get out of this situation we had to end up paying. “The sum of positive and negative attributes

brought to the encounter plus the potential to reward or punish in the future” (Griffin et al. p.86).

The attributes chained together eventually led to a very negative experience, which allowed us to

write our honest reviews about the restaurant and I hope they read them.

Through this assignment I was able to look back and re-evaluate this controversy and

really see the underlying meaning of this communication. From Relational Dialects to

Expectancy Violations Theory, we saw how the communication was effected and how the

physical movements correlated alongside with the behavior. Needless to say, if I ever go back to

Barcelona, I will never eat at that restaurant ever again.

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Critical Incident Paper

Alison Bodkin
Reference

Griffin, E. A., Ledbetter, A., & Sparks, G. G. (2019). A first look at communication theory (10th
ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education.

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