Singing Out Loud at Shoprite Experiment
Purpose/Problem:
What will happen if I sing awkwardly and loudly in a supermarket full of random people?
Background Info: Usually, when you’re in a supermarket buying food and such for your household, you don’t exactly plan on encountering a strange or “abnormal” situation while you are shopping. It’s just not what people expect, it’s not “the norm”. Singing in public is a great example of this sort of situation. It’s a really odd and unexpected thing to happen. This act would be odd because, who actually sings really loudly in the aisles of a supermarket? It’s not the way things usually go. Furthermore, it’s unexpected because, well, I’m pretty sure people don’t leave the house praying that someone will just stand there in the middle of the supermarket singing obnoxious pop songs on the radio.
If they do encounter this sort of occurrence, there are a number of ways on how they could deal with it. Firstly, they could do the easiest out of all the options: walk away and pretend like absolutely nothing bizarre is happening. This is potentially the easiest way to get out of a situation like this one because it just makes the most sense to them. They don’t want to be caught in the awkwardness and have to listen to an awful sounding person singing awful pop songs. Another way people usually would cope with an odd case like this is to just ignore it and go about doing their own thing. For example, if someone were in the cereal section of Shoprite and was just singing loudly, the shopper would just pay no mind to the weird person singing, grab whatever they need to, and continue on with the business. My reasoning for why this happens in occurrences such as this one is because they think it’s just weird and abnormal. People are used to weird situations just out of the blue, so to experience it is an entirely different story. They want to do their best to either get away from it or just ignore it because of the strangeness.
Hypothesis:
If I sing loudly and awkwardly in supermarkets, then people will walk away out of fear/confusion because the situation would be entirely too unusual to deal with.
Experiment:
What I basically did was go to Shoprite and vociferously sang random pop songs in fairly under crowded areas. I sang “Treasure” by Bruno Mars, “What Makes You Beautiful” by One Direction, and “Haven’t Met You Yet” by Michael Bublé. I went to Shoprite (Tuesday, August 19th) and went into an aisle where there were very little people. What I planned on doing was to go into the aisle and find someone who maybe pondering while searching for their item, that way I could pretend to look at items as well and make it look like I’m actually doing something. I wasn’t looking for specific people, just people who were maybe thinking about something or looking cautiously at items. My “audience” was my older sister who stayed towards the back so she could observe and jot notes down for me. She was acting naturally, like a regular shopper, so she could blend in and look nonchalant.

Data:
Type of Person
What did they do? (Reaction) Other Notes/Observations
Woman; Blonde; Caucasian, Mid-Late Forties; with 1 toddler (about 3-4 years of age) and 1 very young child (6-8 years of age)
- Gave me an odd look
- Continued on with observing shampoo
- Kept looking over while I sang out of tune
-Rushed slightly to get kids out of aisle
- She seemed very reserved but tried to look nonchalant
- Her children just stared at me
Shoprite employee; Tall male; Brunette; Black; Maybe early 20’s; very reserved and shy looking
- Stared at me for a couple of seconds
- Started laughing a bit
- After a good 30 seconds passed by, scratched his head to look unperturbed and then walked away.
- Was stacking packs of water bottles when I approached him
- I saw him talking to another employee and he discreetly gave a slight head and in my direction, the other employee chuckled
Elderly woman;