July 31, 2024–When I first became a director and was trying to navigate the power structure, a veteran pulled me aside and said, Phil, administrators are just like dogs; they roam around and mark their turf. Of course, she used a more colorful euphemism for “marking their turf.”
That bit of wisdom not only served me well inside bureaucratic organizations, but helped me better understand all the places in life where power equals place. In other words, everything is real estate.
When you go to a restaurant, you are not buying a meal, you are renting space. And the layout is designed to optimize the amount of revenue they can get you to pay in a limited amount of time.
Restaurant designers literally measure to the inch the distance between table tops. Too much space limits the number of customers they can feed. Too little space destroys the ambience and makes customers leave sooner.
In fast food places, booths and chairs are intentionally uncomfortable to discourage squatters. They want you to scarf that double cheeseburger with bacon and cheddar and get out of the way of the next vanload of little leaguers.
The value of the restaurant itself is real estate. The movie The Founder clearly lays out how Ray Kroc learned that during his takeover of the McDonald’s franchise. He bought the land and leased it back to franchisees. The restaurants might come and go, but he always owned the real estate.
Where else does the lay of the land dictate the direction of the day?
Churches
Didn’t your family have “their” pew every week? You either sat on the right side or the left side. You either sat near the front, in the middle, or at the very back. This arrangement was not based on logic or practicality, but on where your parents, and their parents, sat. God forbid if you every switched sides.
College
After the first day of class, every student returned to their same seat the rest of the semester. As a freshman in Rhetoric class, one day I intentionally sat in a different desk. The co-ed who usually sat there came in and stood awkwardly beside the desk, shifting from foot to foot. She was clearly anxious as she grudgingly found another seat and loudly dropped her book bag at her feet. This showed me the urge to nest is strong.
School bus
Ah, a classic tiered seating system. Kids who get beat up sat in front to be near the bus driver; hall monitors in the middle where they can work on their homework; and shop and auto tech kids in the back where they can debate Fords vs Chevys. I know this, because I at some point sat in every section.
Speaking of Cars
Shotgun! Especially in large families, seating in the station wagon was a negotiation worthy of international détente talks. Little ones in the back-back, the sister who threw up next to a window, the middle child straddling the floor hump, and the teen with the learner permit riding shotgun, controlling the radio. It was not fair.
Home
Dad’s favorite chair? Don’t sit there! Mom’s chair? Only if you put up with knitting needles in the cushions.
But we kids had another seating chart, carried over from the car. In a large family, when seating space was limited for seeing the 19-inch TV screen, you were loathe to give it up for anything, even calls of nature. We nine kids invoked an incantation that protected our property during short absences. If we needed to leave for any reason, we simply chanted, “Place Back! Chair Back! Everything There Back!”
Yes, it sounds silly. But it was an inviolable verbal contract. It placed an impenetrable invisible shield around the chair. While a sibling could keep the seat warm during your absence, they were required to vacate immediately upon your return, or risk a punch in the arm. All in all, a good system, one for which I can visualize working in many adult scenarios.
Maybe we should bring it back. It can’t be any more offensive than “marking your turf.”