My research is on communication in the workplace, particularly the types of talk important to staff collegiality and morale like mundane casual conversation and banter; I’m interested in the small talk people do to build relationships in these more formal settings. I'm taking a fly-on-the-wall approach to recording these mundane conversations to explore how people do descriptions and how these descriptions can cause 'discrimination' by reinforcing taken-for-granted assumptions and isolating particular categories of people.