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The purpose of this paper is to investigate which types of service employees provide their customers with social support and to understand why they do so.

The article employs a network‐based inventory method to evaluate a customer's commercial‐based social support network and grounded theory to develop a framework illustrating the interdependence between service providers and their customers regarding the exchange of intrinsic support and extrinsic financial incentives and gifts.

Indirect service employees who do not directly receive tips from customers emerge as key providers of social support. Also, commercial friendships are not marketplace niceties. Service providers and customers engage in a mutually beneficial exchange of social support, gifts, and tips under the guise of commercial friendships.

The article is based upon service provider and customer relationships in an American diner. Researchers may want to apply the offered model to other contexts and locals. Also, researchers may want to reconsider the idea that service providers willingly provide social support to their customers.

The hiring and training of service employees, such as cashiers, hostesses, and “bus boys,” should be taken into consideration as they may be key providers of social support. Service providers should realize the extrinsic and intrinsic benefits or providing support.

The paper empirically investigates the role of indirect service employees in providing customers with social support. Also, it demonstrates that commercial friendships are mutually beneficial relationships where service providers and customers realize extrinsic and/or intrinsic benefits from these relationships.

When in 1947 Elcometer launched the 101 it was the first hand held coating thickness gauge, the first of thousands; the launch was followed by a tidal wave of competitors, it is to the credit of this very British company that they are still, forty years later, one of the market leaders; it is even more remarkable that the original instrument, with only a few cosmetic changes is still liked and bought by their customers. In the intervening years many new techniques for coating thickness measurement have emerged, some simple, many complicated and the market has divided into fairly clearly defined sectors with unit prices as diverse as the intrinsic value of the end products. As yet no one instrument meets all needs.

The purpose of this paper is to propose and evaluate a proactive reflective activity for mathematics student teachers in which they consider mathematical content and its teaching in highly specific classroom situations.

The study was conducted in context of a mathematics Initial Teacher Education programme in the UK. Participants were invited from the whole cohort of student teachers to identify, script and reflect upon critical classroom incidents. In total, 12 such scripts were produced and then discussed by 17 student teachers in group and plenary sessions. Discussions were audio-recorded. Scripts and discussions were analysed according to four characteristics: consistency between stated pedagogical priorities and intended practices; specificity of the reflection to the classroom situation reported in the scripts; reification of pedagogical discourse; and, reification of mathematical discourse.

In the results, the authors exemplify student teachers’ insights that emerged from the analysis of the scripts through the typology of the four characteristics, and the authors observe that the student teachers’ insights mirror the complexity and richness of the mathematics classrooms they face. The authors’ examples and their evaluation through the aforementioned typology of the four characteristics illustrate the potency of student teachers’ participation in producing, and reflecting upon, individually and collectively, critical incidents of their inaugural experiences in the classroom.

As these activities take placein the context of teacher education, professional development or developmental research environments, an additional challenge is to generate robust and informative evaluation of teachers’ engagement with reflection and research on their practice. This study takes on this challenge in the context of a mathematics teacher education programme in the UK: the authors propose and evaluate a proactive reflective activity for mathematics student teachers in which they consider mathematical content and its teaching in highly specific classroom situations.

The examples and their evaluation through the typology of four characteristics illustrate the potency of student teachers’ participation in producing, and reflecting upon, individually and collectively, critical incidents of their inaugural experiences in the classroom.

This paper seeks to explain the jury’s verdict of acquittal in the bizarre case of eccentric millionaire Robert Durst, who was charged with the murder of Morris Black after Black’s body parts were found floating in Galveston Bay off the coast of Texas. Though an analysis of a portion of the defense’ closing argument, this paper examines the Durst defense team’s strategy of directing the jury’s attention to a single event – the confrontation that resulted in Black’s death – in order to effect a shift in focus that allowed them to use “reasonable doubt” to leverage their argument that the prosecution had not met its burden of proof. This paper demonstrates how this strategy acted to construct the “unreasonable doubt” that resulted in the jury’s verdict.