When going about breaking a social norm, it was hard to find something which is surprising because I am a teenager and am always making trouble some way or another. What I decided to do was go to Walmart and play some music over the Bluetooth speakers. The social norm is just to walk around and look at the speakers with the intention to buy. The very reason I went to Walmart was to play loud songs on any speaker I could get a hold of. 

I was hanging out with my friends and said that I needed to go to Walmart, and they agreed because we never have anything else to do besides mess around at random places. We walked around for a little bit and messed around and when no one was looking, I slipped away and went straight for the speakers. When I got there, it was loud because there were so many speakers and stereos and TV’s around. I turned all the sample tracks down on all the speakers, so it was a quiet enough to hear my music clearly. I then started trying to connect to any speaker I could and luckily, I found about two that worked (they have some sort of blocker on the speakers to prevent you from connecting).  

I connected to one of the speakers and walked away, trying not to seem suspicious or out of the ordinary. I went a couple dozen feet away from the speakers and any people and started to play music. I slowly turned up the volume all the way to max. I proceeded to walk around and act like I was shopping, but it was also really funny because people would walk by and look very alarmed and a little mad.

At one point,  the workers eventually started trying to figure out who was connected to the speakers. They saw us and, being teenagers, they probably assumed that we were up to no good. This was true, but no one knew that. I tried not to act too guilty and we made our way out of the store. I eventually walked out of range of the speakers and the music stopped. The workers stopped searching around, but I could tell they were intent on catching whoever did it, but I managed to blend in and get away with it. 

I would say that pulling this off was harder than I expected, mainly because it is harder to act normal when you know something that someone else doesn’t. Nevertheless, it was successful, and I feel pretty good about how it all went down. We also had permission from one of the managers but none of the workers knew.