Buying Lumber at the Hardware Store

Context: Buying Lumber at the Hardware Store

For this assignment, I chose to map out how to purchase lumber from the hardware store. The context for this would typically be in person at a large box-store like Home Depot, Home Hardware, or Rona type store, and may involve interactions with a range of people including cashiers, contractors, tradespeople, salespeople, or other customers.

Much like other subcultures, folks who frequent construction supply stores often have recognizable clothing, terminology, and behaviours that, to an outsider, may appear obscure or confusing, but to an insider represent an ideal way of navigating a hardware store. The interactions I aim to map intend to illuminate the patterns of language use, shared assumptions, and cultural interactions that often structure the typical purchase of construction supplies from a retail store.

Instruction Manual

Here is a step by step breakdown of how to purchase and pick out lumber from the hardware store.

3. Analysis using the Onion Model

In considering Hofstede’s “Onion Model,” we can analyze the process of buying lumber as a broader multi-layered system. The outer layer consists of data: symbols and language. Measurements, shorthand, slang, and other hardware-store idioms often serve as distinguishing characteristics that showcase one’s knowledge and competence with something. As it relates to construction culture, the communication of data and symbols follows certain standards; the way one speaks about materials can shift the power dynamic of a conversation, or influence how someone else speaks. Some examples that demonstrate the data layer would be knowing to speak about measurements in inches and feet or knowing common stock sizes (8ft, 10ft, 12ft, 14ft, 16ft etc. always using imperial). These serve as cultural characteristics that function more like symbolic rules than simple vocabulary recall.

As related to purchasing lumber, the next layer of this diagram serves to recognize hardware store exemplars and seasoned contractors: the “Heroes”. In my example, these would be the folks who have learned and are fluent with hardware store terminology such that that know where things are, what types of construction supplies can be ordered and how, and someone who makes correct decisions with efficiency and decisiveness acting as role models for the culture.

Together, the inner and outer layers of Hofstede’s “Onion Model” include the element of practices that creates an interconnectedness between these sections. Applying this logic to the context of purchasing lumber, there is a clear ritualistic “way of doing” things that is kept alive by culture bearers through the use of cultural information and data.

At the center of the diagram is the heart of the values that drive cultural behaviors and considerations. As related to purchasing lumber, values like friendliness and clarity come to mind as being important. Because the transaction of purchasing lumber places the burden on the customer to articulate specific needs and measurements, self-reliance is another value that is highly prized within the hardware-store realm. That said, questions are always acceptable to most anyone at the hardware store, but it becomes important to realize the limitations of a cashier’s knowledge compared to that of a professional trades person. Patience, humor, and a sense of collective responsibility and learning are also other values I imagine would apply to the majority of hardware store goers.

4. Reflection

Mapping out the different cultural characteristics through a process like this, to me, really highlights how high the “barrier to entry” is in certain circumstances.

In addition, through the use of the Onion Model, reflecting on the nuances involved in each of the above steps brings to light the idea that culture is not something we have but something we do by engaging with rituals, data, and heroes of our own subcultures.

References