This fascinating awareness drill was given to me by an alumni of Tom Brown's Tracker school in New Jersey.
This drill will cost you one cup of coffee and take about 30 minutes.
The idea is simple: find a brick and mortar store (a Starbucks at off-peak hours is perfect), and walk slowly through the parking lot. Ideally, there shouldn't be more than 10 or so cars, and all the cars should have owners inside the Starbucks (so in areas like strip malls where parking spots aren't well defined, this can be more challenging, but still fun).
As you walk past the cars, try to learn what you can about their owners. DO NOT be obvious about this -- you'll look like a hood looking for a car to break into! Sometimes learning about the car's owner is easy (who hasn't seen those stick figure family stickers on the backs of minivans?) A tricked-out Honda Civic with spinners probably doesn't belong to the senior citizen with the military crew-cut. He probably has the ride with the blue Department of Defense sticker at the top. The $60k luxury sedan probably doesn't go with the pimple-faced teenager working the cash register.
Usually. Sometimes you get surprises.
Go inside and get your favorite FourBuxx latte, then grab a seat near a window where you can observe the parking lot. See if your guesses were correct as the patrons eventually return to their cars. Remember that some of the cars (usually the ones with the best parking spots) will belong to the barristas (don't forget to tip!). Sometimes you can even strike up a conversation with one and see if you can non-chalantly learn if a car is theirs, but this works best if the car has some kind of highly-personalized feature (such as bumper stickers or expensive after market mods).
If you want to get better at this drill in a hurry, spend 10 minutes watching a drive-thru line. First observe the vehicle, then try to paint a mental picture of what kind of person would drive that, then look in the driver's seat.
An excellent video that shows how much information can be read from vehicles (and many other sources) is below. It's worth the watch.
Let me know what you discover!
I sometimes do a similar exercise by parking further out in a parking lot. I despise driving around looking for a closer space in a crowded lot anyway. While walking in, I sometimes do the same with the people coming out. Generally, there are fewer people and less time to examine cars that I may not have even passed yet. However, body language plays into it, and it costs neither coffee nor time.
ReplyDeleteYou can do a variant of this drill at your office, or other parking areas that you habitually frequent. Take a look at a car where you don't know who it belongs to. Look at any paperwork on the inside. Oil change reminder stickers on the window. Bumper stickers. Car seats. Where they park. What time they are there, and when they aren't. Can you put together a picture of who owns that ride?
DeleteIf you keep it up, and if the car is always parked there, you will get new information about the owner continually. Eventually you'll see that person coming in or getting out.