Research Paper: Emotional Labor in Service Industries
Literacy practices surround us and enable us to live in society and communicate more effectively. Far from being limited to the basic knowledge of how to read and write, literacy encompasses many facets of our daily activities. Like many ot¬her people, I work a part-time job in food service to help fund my way through college. Being a cashier in a restaurant has its ups and downs and presents some unique challenges. This sort of entry-level position is widely considered an undesirable occupation, although it may be temporarily necessary. However, as someone interested in the study of writing and literacy, I am discovering that there may be more to this sort of customer-focused occupation than meets the eye. Recently, as part of my studies, I read an article by Tony Mirabelli, a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, on the use of language and literacy used by food service workers. This autoethnographic text, titled “Learning to Serve,” expresses key ideas about the skills used by waiters and waitresses. Mirabelli’s discussion opens the door to a wider conversation about the kinds of literacies involved in service jobs. In particular, the concept of emotional labor is key to understanding the experiences of workers in service industries.
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Emotional labor is a term first used by the sociologist Arlie Hochschild in her 1983 book titled The Managed Heart. In their 1999 study on the development of this concept since its origin, Ronnie Steinberg and Deborah Figart summarize that “[e]motional labor emphasizes the relational rather than the task-based aspect of work found primarily but not exclusively in the service economy” (9). Hwa and Amin define this service sector as “a variety of areas including food service, customer service, and social service” (80). This kind of industry is growing and rapidly becoming more significant, taking up nearly 71% of the global GDP in 2010 (Hwa and Amin 8). Therefore, studying the components of the service economy is valuable because of how many people it impacts. Emotional labor is a crucial part of jobs in service industries because of the relationship of workers to the customers in this context. Customer-focused businesses such as retail stores and restaurants tend to operate on the principle that the customer is always right, even when they may not be right. This creates a pressure to please and appease the people who essentially control one’s paycheck with their purchases. Patrons of establishments such as stores and restaurants tend to expect not only a product or service but a certain type of calm, friendly, and encouraging experience, which may be summarized as “service with a smile.” This expectation, though usually unspoken, has the effect of challenging service workers to display the emotion the situation seems to call for, regardless of whether they genuinely experience that feeling.
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Here, Hochschild distinguishes between surface acting and deep acting in regard to emotional labor. As Steinberg and Figart explain, surface acting involves a pretense of emotion, where “the displayed emotion differs from what the employee actually feels” (11). Deep acting, however, draws out the worker’s internal feelings and “tries to invoke the actual displayed feelings or emotions, as a method actor does when portraying a role.” Of these, surface acting is the one most commonly expected and employed. This is a significant endeavor, requiring careful attention to oneself and to the customers with whom one is interacting. A study on restaurant workers in 2015 notes that “workers in interactive service roles have to simultaneously manage their own emotions and influence the emotional responses of their customers” (Sharma et al. 346). The customer-oriented nature of service work requires a unique understanding of oneself, of the people who are being served, and of how to present oneself to satisfy the expectations of those being served.
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The emphasis service jobs place on the masking of true emotion carries a number of implications. In a study titled “Beyond Emotion: Interactive Service Work and the Skills of Women,” Australian researchers on employment express that emotional labor is best understood as a type of “articulation work” skill, which “consists of the activities undertaken to coordinate (articulate) all the many tasks in individual and collective ‘lines’, ‘arcs’ and ‘trajectories’ of work” (Junor et al. 364). Thus, emotional labor can be identified within the category of communication skills. Sharma et al. also see this connection, stating that emotional labor is “more pronounced in interactive service roles where significant communication is necessarily exchanged as a part of the service delivery” (338). In “Learning to Serve,” Mirabelli identifies the communication skills used by service workers as “multiliteracies,” a term created by the New London Group to expand the traditional understanding of literacy by “addressing the multiplicity of communications channels and the increasing saliency of cultural and linguistic diversity in the world today” (302). However, Mirabelli notes that “[l]iteracy practices in this environment are nothing like those found in traditional classrooms” (314). The literacy requirements of workplaces are quite different than those taught in school, and this is apparent in a particular way when considering the emotional labor in service work. As Sharma et al. point out, this habit of placing the desires of the customer before one’s own feelings is “a learned behavior” that “requires a match between the employees’ natural personality and the expected state of mind to be displayed” and is developed through experience (345). It is not a habit that comes naturally to all but one that can be learned and must be practiced before it can be effective.
The nature of emotional labor as a learned skill makes it a stratifying and often negative experience. Because it is a learned skill that does not come naturally, some can develop and practice it more effectively than others. This labor commonly results in stress for individuals who struggle to reconcile their feelings with the façade they must display. This can lead to what Sharma et al. refer to as “emotive dissonance,” when “sustained differences in displayed and perceived emotions” results in “emotional exhaustion in employees” (341). Among the effects of this emotive dissonance are problems such as stress, burnout, low self-esteem, depression, and work alienation (Sharma et al. 341). The regulation of emotions requires one to play a part while also performing the physical tasks of a job, and the effects can be severe and isolating. Arguably, this practice may also be unethical, raising questions about the morality of what could be seen as deception and manipulation for the sake of profit. These negative effects in individuals stand in contrast to the positive results emotional labor brings to organizations in the service industry.
Despite the drawbacks emotional labor can have, some researchers still believe in its beneficial aspects. Amy Wharton, for example, who has written on emotional labor’s impact on job satisfaction, asserts that while these jobs can bring about “negative psychological consequences under certain circumstances, jobs requiring emotional demands also have a positive effect on workers’ well-being” (qtd. in Steinberg and Figart 22). A study on the connection between emotional regulation and customer tips by Hülsheger et al. found that this practice can be significantly profitable when it is practiced effectively. This study supports deep acting and automatic regulation as a way to be “financially rewarded for their goodwill and effort by earning a higher tip” while maintaining their authenticity and reducing stress (Hülsheger et al. 274).
Emotional labor can also be a means of gaining power, which is particularly significant when considering gender roles in service industries. Mirabelli is only one of many who discuss the fact that jobs such as waitressing are not highly valued due to the perception that they do not require skills. Based on what Mirabelli describes as “our general perceptions and ways of interacting,” the kind of personality service jobs require is stereotypically associated with femininity (315). Steinberg and Figart note that decisions about who is best for a job reflect cultural and social norms, so service organizations in the United States that value displays of warmth and friendliness are more likely to hire women due to the belief that they tend to “smile and display more warmth than men do” (18). These roles may simply reinforce gender stereotypes and continue inequality by associating women with an underappreciated and low-paying job. However, Steinberg and Figart also report the discovery that “[s]cripted emotional labor can assist employees in enforcing their will over others” (20). In an environment where workers are somewhat at the mercy of both the customers and their supervisors, becoming fluent in emotional labor can provide a means of gaining some element of power, enabling workers to claim a sense of autonomy and control.
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If it can be separated from its potential negative effects, the financial benefit of emotional labor could make an otherwise low-paying job more profitable and worthwhile, in addition to allowing marginalized workers to exercise power. Hülsheger et al. argue that this is indeed possible. Their article on emotion regulation and customer tips discusses automatic regulation, or a third form of emotion regulation, which “involves the authentic display of desired emotions” by genuinely producing the expected emotions within oneself (263). This combines passive and deep acting into “passive deep acting,” which appears to be more effective than either individual approach (264). Hülsheger et al. suggest that a “mindfulness intervention” may effectively reduce the use of surface acting and therefore decrease the exhaustion and stress involved in jobs (275). The study they conducted suggested a way to do this: giving employees “written instructions, brief daily exercises, and reflective assignments on cognitive change and attentional deployment” (275). While they acknowledge that this method still needs more testing and research, it demonstrates that successfully using emotional labor may be more achievable than was initially thought.
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In a literate society like ours, humans’ lives are filled with a diverse range of communication activities, even in occupations that have little to do with writing. As Mirabelli explains, while a multitude of literacy practices are engrained into our daily lives, there are many that are not fully recognized or appreciated. Acknowledging and naming these multiliteracies is a crucial step toward using them more effectively. The concept of emotional labor puts a name to a source of many stresses and frustrations that come with working in a service industry. The effort required to use it effectively is underestimated by the common opinion that service jobs are unskilled. A better understanding of emotional labor, its implications, and its applications would benefit the public.
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While emotional labor is a skill that must be learned and that is different from the literacies taught in school, a background in studying writing may allow one to better understand this concept. There is an element of rhetoric, or finding the available means of persuasion for individual contexts, in the practice of emotional labor, where one evaluates the situation and presents the emotion best suited for the audience. Someone familiar with being rhetorical in writing or speaking may be better prepared to take on the demands of being rhetorical with their emotions and adapting their displayed feelings to fit their audience. Because resources for training in effective use of emotional labor would help a great deal of people acclimate better to their work, there is also a possibility here for writers familiar with rhetoric to use their background to explore solutions for this training.
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Although emotional labor is not directly connected to the practices taught in schools, it holds an important place in the communication skills used by many workers worldwide. This makes it a versatile and powerful tool that may be better understood as a literary practice. Despite the negative effects it can have on workers, it also possesses a potential to create better working situations for service employees, who contribute to a large part of the economy. Training in understanding the nature and applications of emotional labor could alleviate some of its problems while better preparing service workers to succeed.
Works Cited
Hochschild, Arlie R. The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling, University of California Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, ebookcentral-proquest-com.proxy.ulib.uits.iu.edu/lib/iupui-ebooks/detail.action?docID=870020. Accessed 7 Nov. 2020.
Hülsheger, Ute R., et al. “When Regulating Emotions at Work Pays Off: A Diary and an Intervention Study on Emotion Regulation and Customer Tips in Service Jobs.” Journal of Applied Psychology, vol. 100, no. 2, Mar. 2015, pp. 263-277. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1037/a0038229. Accessed 18 Nov. 2020.
Hwa, Magdalene A. C., and Hanudin Amin. "Why Emotion at Work Matters: Examining the Influence of Emotional Labour and Emotional Intelligence on Workplace Behaviours among Service Workers in East Malaysia.” Kajian Malaysia, vol. 34, no. 1, 2016, pp. 79-105. ProQuest, ulib.iupui.edu/cgi-bin/proxy.pl?url=http://search.proquest.com.proxy.ulib.uits.iu.edu/docview/2038608794?accountid=7398. Accessed 21 Nov. 2020.
Junor, Anne, et al. "Beyond Emotion: Interactive Service Work and the Service of Women." International Journal of Work Organisation and Emotion, vol. 2, no. 4, Jan. 2008, pp. 358-73. ResearchGate, doi:10.1504/IJWOE.2008.022114. Accessed 18 Nov. 2020.
Mirabelli, Tony. “Learning to Serve: The Language and Literacy of Food Service Workers.” Writing about Writing, edited by Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs, Bedford-St. Martins, 2017, pp. 298-317.
Sharma, Anand, et al. “Emotional Labor in Interactive Service Roles in Indian Restaurants.” Indian Journal of Industrial Relations, vol. 51, no. 2, 2015, pp. 338–350. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43974576. Accessed 22 Nov. 2020.
Steinberg, Ronnie J., and Deborah M. Figart. “Emotional Labor Since the Managed Heart.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 561, 1999, pp. 8–26. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1049278. Accessed 22 Nov. 2020.