A Respectful Distance . . .

One of the perils of my job is that I could be accused of being a bit of a dork. For instance, one part of my job is to understand and explain how and why people communicate in the ways that they do. One of the ways that people communicate is through their use of space and I'll admit that how people use space is a source of constant fascination to me.

For instance, take the other day when I saw a Dallas police officer who was having a chat with a (rather portly) panhandler in a very busy intersection in Dallas. The officer had pulled his car along the sidewalk and was talking to the panhandler through his passenger window. The panhandler was standing on the far side of the sidewalk (as far away from the police car as possible without leaving the sidewalk) and had positioned himself so that he was almost even with the front tire of the police car. The officer had to lean all the way into the passenger seat and all the way forward just to talk to the guy.

As I sat at the red light watching this interchange, it struck me that the panhandler was using space to lessen the police officer's control of the situation. He was making life just a little bit hard for the cop without being overtly disrespectful.

While I sat there (it was a really long light), the panhandler shuffled up the sidewalk just a bit so that he was pretty much even with the front bumper of the car. At this point, he actually took control of the situation because the cop could not continue the conversation without either leaning completely across the car and out the passenger window or pulling forward. He chose to pull forward and thus surrendered a little bit more of his power to the panhandler.

Clearly, the police officer was still in a one-up position in terms of the power dynamics of the interchange, but the panhandler significantly diminished the officer's power status through nothing more than a shuffle of the feet.