A new version of essay 3

“We do costumer service” responded Severine, when I once asked my friend and coworker Severine how she would call our job at the airport as airline employees. This is how the whole discussion on job types, and workers emotions started between us. We were on our way home that night after work and I told her that I learned from my English class that same day that service jobs were considered as “emotional labor” as well as some “physical labor”. She still couldn’t figure out what I was talking about. Then, I told her that there is a relationship between the type of job people perform and the emotions they display at work and in real life. That’s when she told me that her emotions have nothing to do with her work. She just smiles while taking care of people at work, and keeps her emotions for real life. In other words, you have to detach all emotions related to this type of job in order to perform it at the best of your abilities.
Well, that’s what I used to believe too, until the day I read a passage from “Exploring the Managed Heart.” a book from Arlie Hoschild that talks about the “commercialization of human feeling” and started wondering what is “emotional labor” how is it related to “physical labor” and “mental labor”; what is emotional labor’s impact on workers’ private life, and their life at work itself.
But first let’s see how the nature of labor changed trough time in the United States. Until the 1800sthe type of labor that was practiced in U.S was farming. Millions of enslaved African-Americans were working in the plantations o cotton, sugar, tobacco and rice in the southern region of the U.S. Then what follows is a period of rapid industrialization that was favorable to the massive production and commercialization of goods. In other words, the 19th century was more characterized by factory jobs which are commonly known as “physical labor” because of the physical effort they demand. From the advent of the 2000s to present, the type of labor that is practiced is more of service type; demanding more interpersonal contact, and a certain state of mind from the worker in order to perform the job.
Nowadays, we still see both “physical and service labor with a predominance for service jobs. In the case of this discussion, we are more concerned by what they both might have in common: the emotional cost of doing their job. What is the impact of these two types of jobs on workers; eventually which one affects more workers emotions? Hoschild described their individual implications in these terms: physical labor require “coordination of mind and arm, mind and finger, and mind and shoulder” while service labor in the case of a flight attendant pushing heavy meals carts, preparing and organizing emergency landings for example, require “physical labor,…mental work,…she is doing something more, something I define as emotional labor.”(Hoschild 7). Yes it is in trying to draw a line between what both physical and service jobs require from workers that she came up with the term of “emotional labor”.
Obviously, both physical and service labors imply emotions. Again in this case we are referring to the feelings of workers toward their job or just the feelings induced by the practice of a job while on the job or more in their private life.
Certain type of emotions for workers like Severine and I, who perform a service job may be part of the job requirements. We have to display “happiness to serve” others at work. But, some other emotions displayed by workers toward work and outside work are the consequence of practicing a job that they may not like or enjoy doing as discussed later.
For workers who do physical labor, officially their work requires nothing more than physical effort. But, as we are about to see in Mike Lefevre’s interview with Terkel “Who Build the Pyramids?” in the book “Working” there is more involved in this type of labor. These workers deal with muscles pain that they have to deny in order to continuing working; there is no social life at work as interpersonal interactions are not necessary; alienation from self and from work itself is a major issue among workers.
Here is a longtime worker in a steel Mill, Mike who’s testimony describe his feelings toward his work and how these feelings affect his everyday life as follows: “It’s hard to take pride in a bridge you’re never gonna cross,…You’re mass-producing things and you never see the end result of it.”(Terkel xxxi). Because he’s at the beginning of a chain line, he doesn’t see the finished product of his work; he doesn’t know where the steel bars him and his coworkers lift everyday go. It is indeed hard to appreciate a job if one can’t tell what the result of his work is and can’t point it to anyone. This is why Mike compares the finished product of his work to the Pyramids, the Empire State Building; no one thinks of the hard work of their builders, people just enjoy them.(Terkel xxxii). There is so much frustration, and lack of self-esteem in Mike that he directs his anger to anyone that annoys him including his wife. This is a price of physical work that is not exposed.
Now in the case of service labor employees, the involvement of emotions in their work is a very different case. For most or all these jobs, workers have to be willing to “suppress” some emotions and “display” other ones as predetermined by their future or actual employers.
In fact, management of “service Jobs” put a high pressure on their employees to make them display an attitude that represents their goodwill of delivering an outstanding service to their clients. For those customer-service representatives who are not comfortable in interpersonal interactions, these techniques may push them to their limit, and induce them in a situation of stress.
In the article “May I Help You Becomes an Issue in Customer-Service Jobs”, written after a Verizon call center employees complain about the stress they endure at work, the author reports that as per the Bureau of Labor Statistics “nearly half of all recorded occupational stress cases occur among technical, sales and administrative support workers, the category that includes customer-service representatives and the median length of absence for occupational stress is more than four times that of other work place injuries and illnesses.” (Williams Walsh 14). As per this article, the customer-service jobs are the cause of half of the reported occupation stress by workers. In other words customer-service jobs put many people in work related disability that is four times harder to heal than any other work related disability. Employees of the Verizon call center told Williams Walsh that the cause of their stress “is not selling …but having to do it according to standard scripts and procedures when common sense tells them not to.” (Williams Walsh 14). Because they are watched and they know that the evaluation of their works depend not on the “good job performance” but, on how well they follow the company’s instructions on proposing to the client a product he doesn’t need. These workers do everything they can to save a job that requires frequent mandatory overtime that take over their family time. This just reminds me of Severine. As a ticket sales agent who has a one year old son at home, she almost never gets to leave work on time. Every time our incoming flights are delayed from Paris, she has to stay and rebook delayed and angry passengers who are going beyond New York. She’s not happy because of the workload she has to endure but at the same time she has a son to feed; she can’t afford to lose her job, and more sometimes she needs that extra money. So, she chose not to show her unhappiness at work and just do her job. This is exactly what is creating stress and unhappiness in customer-service worker’s personal life. By repressing their real feelings in order to induce happiness in other people they end up with ambiguous emotions toward their work and even outside work.
Speaking of workers happiness and their work conditions, the research the University of California conducted revealed that “Faking your feelings at work, especially if your boss pressures you to do it, is an important factor in burnout.” (Burling F4). These findings were discussed in the article “ Faking happiness detrimental to workers.”. The author in explaining the relationship between worker’s happiness and their work conditions says that workers who work without any pressure from their boss are the happiest customer-service representatives.(Burling F4). In other words people who see customer-service as a carrier weren’t sensitive to management’s supervision because they don’t fake anything while doing their job; everything they do comes naturally and freely. But for others, like some of the call center employees the article is about, the management has to help them persuade the client that they are happy to serve by giving them mirrors so they can look at their own image while on the phone with clients.(Burling F4). If they see a happy worker talking that means the client perceives a happy worker therefore the transaction will have a happy ending.
As we saw Mike’s case, the excess of “physical labor” if not perceived as a carrier it can induce some emotional state of being. It can make the worker feel some negative emotions about his work, himself and others. For customer-service representatives what matter the most is the pressure exerted by the boss on workers to do the job in a very specific way, it is not the job itself. Because it make the workers swing between happy to very sad moods.
In any case, maybe workers should start choosing their carriers in function of what they are good at, and more what they enjoy doing. Because as mentioned by Burling in his article, the happiest workers he observed were the ones that weren’t forced to display an emotion that wasn’t theirs. These people have fun and enjoy their jobs whether physical or service.
As for my friend Severine, she changed department. At the beginning of May, she went to the Cargo department where she will have a very different assignment and a nine to five fixed schedule with no risk of having to stay overtime. Her problem she said with the tickets sales department was with her constant late shifts she had to find a babysitter who would stay late with her son until she’s back. This was always a struggle for her because no one wanted to work late babysitting a one year old.