Alibis and Aliases: Some Notes on the `Motives' of Fiddling Bread Salesmen

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Abstract
A lengthy period of participant observation and subsequent semi-structured interviewing in the sales department of a factory bakery showed that the bread salesmen regularly `fiddle' small amounts of money from their customers. Paradoxically, although this is clearly theft, the salesmen manage to sustain a definition of the practice as merely trifling. This article attempts to unravel this paradox by examining the salesmens' `motives'. In a tradition established by C. Wright Mills, David Matza and Marvin Scott and Stanford Lyman, `motives' are here located in the salesmens' verbal responses to questions posed in natural settings by ingenious or exasperated customers. Recorded conversations and reminiscences are reproduced to illustrate how salesmen systematically sustain a protected self-conception which does not allow others to promote their fiddling-selves from auxiliary to master status in their reflexive construction of identity. This self-protection is constructed at two distinct levels. Firstly, alibis are publicly produced to neutralize blame, and secondly, aliases are privately generated to neutralize any feelings of shame. A grounded, general typology of possible responses to accusations is generated in consideration of the reported empirical data.

This publication has 1 reference indexed in Scilit:

  • On Face-Work
    Psychiatry: Interpersonal & Biological Processes, 1955