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Hospitality Management 19 (2000) 159}171

Emotional labour: a comparison between fast

food and traditional service work
Diane Seymour*
School of Hotel and Restaurant Management, Oxford Brookes University, Gipsy Lane Campus, Headington,
Oxford OX3 OBP, UK

Abstract
There is a strand of thinking on service work which sees it as signi"cantly di!erent from other
kinds of work due to the &emotional' as well as the physical and mental labour which it entails.
This study seeks to investigate and compare the &emotional labour' involved in traditional
service work and fast food service work. It examines whether there are signi"cant di!erences in
the kind or degree of emotional labour demanded in the more personalised service of traditional
restaurant outlets from that required in the standardised service provided in fast food restaurants and whether workers develop and adopt di!erent strategies for dealing with the emotional
demands placed on them.  2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Emotional labour; Service work; Strategies

1. Introduction
There has been a long-standing debate over whether the Hospitality industry is or is
not unique (Mullins, 1981; Riley, 1996). Whilst some authors argued that it was and
would always be signi"cantly di!erent from manufacturing work because of the
intangible nature of its product and the triangular relationship between customer,
worker and manager, others argued that due to advances in the use of technology,
standardisation and market shifts, service work was, through deskilling, coming to
approximate manufacturing work more closely and that this trend would continue
(Levitt, 1972; Braverman, 1974). These writers argue that the use of technology in
some sectors of the Hospitality Industry has resulted in work organisation, practices

* Corresponding author.
0278-4319/00/$ - see front matter  2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 2 7 8 - 4 3 1 9 ( 0 0 ) 0 0 0 0 9 - 8

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and experiences which have more in common with factory work than with service
work. Braverman (1974) and Levitt (1972), although starting from di!erent places and
assumptions, have converged in an account of fast food work which follows the path
taken by the manufacturing sector, dominated by mechanisation and standardisation.
In this view, the fast food sector can no longer be regarded as a &people' industry; in so
far as the fast food sector can be seen as a pioneering vanguard of hospitality work,
then the industry is changing, it is argued, from a people industry to a high tech
industry. However, the analogy with manufacturing work can be taken too far. Even
fast food workers interact with customers. For many practitioners, the sense remains
that Hospitality work is di!erent in important ways from work in other sectors, but
until Hoschchild's (1983) research on airline stewardesses and the concept of emotional labour was published, it proved di$cult to pin down exactly where these
di!erences lie.
Hochschild argued that service work is signi"cantly di!erent from other kinds of
work due to the `emotionala as well as the physical and mental labour which it entails.
She suggests that customer service sta! are required to manage their emotions for the
bene"t of the customers. Customer service sta! are paid not just for their technical
skills but also for their `emotional laboura which has exchange value. The smile,
produced regardless of what members of sta! actually feel, is part of the work.
Hochschild's focus here is not just on the emotions which workers actually feel but on
those emotions which they are required to display. Customer service sta! do not
always actually feel the emotions that they are required to produce. For example,
faced with an angry customer, they may feel angry themselves, but they have to act to
display the `correcta emotion. This she calls surface acting: the acting out of an
emotion which is not actually felt. However, in some workplaces this is not enough;
sta! are expected to `feela the emotions they are required to display. This she calls
`deep actinga. Hochschild argues that this requirement is becoming increasingly
common as companies strive to compete in the area of customer service quality.
Surface acting is no longer seen as enough since it can appear false to the customer, so
employees are encouraged to practice an `inside outa smile. Hochschild argued that in
this way service workers are required to invest a certain amount of their &true selves'
in their work which can result in e!ects which are potentially damaging to the worker
in a way which is analogous to the physical harm su!ered by some industrial workers.
This view of service work "ts with common conceptions of the hospitality industry
held by many of its practitioners as unique or signi"cantly di!erent from manufacturing industries and therefore not amenable to practices common in those industries.
Hochschild concentrated on the damaging e!ects of emotional labour, particularly
its routinisation, but other writers have since suggested that she has exaggerated the
`humana costs associated with this type of work. Fineman (1993) for example argues
that the `negative picture of corporate control over emotions is . . . somewhat overstateda and he points out that service workers can enjoy the fun of giving a performance whilst being aware that they are acting. Ashforth and Humphrey (1993) claim
that the notion that emotions necessarily need to be acted out and di!er from
authentic emotions may not always hold true. A service worker may `naturally feel
what he or she is expected to express without having to work at the emotion in the

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sense discussed by Hochschilda. Later research by Leidner (1993) which looked at fast
food work suggested that in some circumstances the existence of standardised work
practices such as scripts might actually o!er some protection to service workers
against the psychological costs of acting in a way which estranges the worker from
their true feelings.
There are some important issues to explore here. Perhaps one source of the
disagreement over whether emotional labour is damaging and in what ways, might be
that it is di!erently experienced in di!erent work settings. So this study seeks to
investigate and compare the `emotional laboura involved in traditional food service
work and fast food service work. It examines whether there are signi"cant di!erences
in the kind or degree of emotional labour demanded in the more personalised service
of traditional restaurant outlets from that required in the standardised service provided in fast food restaurants and whether workers develop and adopt di!erent
strategies for dealing with the emotional demands placed on them.
Primary research was conducted through semi-structured interviews of a sample of
workers at a typical fast food restaurant and at a traditional silver service restaurant.
The two types of service chosen were standardised service (represented by a wellknown company which we have called Speedy's) and traditional silver service (represented by a high-class personalised service restaurant which we have called Silver's).
As has been well documented by Gabriel (1988) Leidner (1993) and others, employee
roles at companies such as Speedy's are tightly de"ned and work is strictly controlled
by procedures covering areas such as bookkeeping, purchasing, food production,
dealing with customers, sales techniques and virtually every other aspect of work. The
assembly line techniques allow an identical product and service to be produced
worldwide. Employees' behaviour is governed by scripts which allow them little scope
to use their own initiative when dealing with customers or controlling their workload.
Permission to conduct the research had to be obtained from Speedy's Head o$ce
rather than from the branch manager (unsurprisingly, given the high degree Head
o$ce exerts over all aspects of local branch activity). However, once the agreement
had been given, the branch manager was extremely helpful in providing information
and allowing access to the sta!. The choice of establishment to represent personalised
service was less straightforward. Many managers were unwilling to participate or to
allow their sta! to do so. We were therefore extremely grateful to the manager of the
Silver's for agreeing to take part. At the Silver's restaurant, clientele are mainly
a%uent couples and businessmen. Sta! are organised in the French Brigade system
and a great deal of emphasis is placed on the high class dining experience. At this
establishment there are codes of conduct sta! must obey throughout the service
interaction but they are in a position to organise their work far more freely and have
a certain degree of control regarding the manner in which customers are dealt with
throughout the service encounter.
We decided to use the semi-structured interviewing technique as other methods
such as questionnaires or observational analysis alone would not produce the in
depth information and insight into people's inner thoughts and feelings. We felt that
face to face contact would allow the interviewers to build up a relationship of trust
which would encourage our respondents to speak freely about their experiences. In

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addition to this it seemed likely that our respondents would be culturally diverse and
that a standard interview format would therefore be inappropriate. On the other hand
we also rejected a totally unstructured non-directive interviewing technique because
we wanted to be able to make comparisons between sta! in the two establishments.
We developed a number of topic areas for discussion with the respondents, which
could be dealt with in any order so that the conversation could #ow reasonably
naturally. These topic areas included: the use of scripted speech; codes of dress; acting
versus authenticity; and departures from scripted speech. Interviews took place in
a quiet corner of the sta! rest areas. A total of 24 respondents were interviewed: 12 of
these were waiting sta! at Silver's (7 female and 5 male); a further 12 were interviewed
at Speedy's (8 female and 4 male). The age range was between 19}35 at Silver's and
16}24 at Speedy's. We felt that these pro"les "tted expected characteristics of workers
in both types of establishment based on our literature review. The exception to this
was that all of the respondents were white British. Whilst student labour was used in
both establishments, a higher proportion of the sta! at Speedy's were drawn from this
labour market, again, as might be expected. It may be the case that permanent and
casual sta! might respond di!erently to the demands of emotional labour. However,
the sample size here was not su$cient to draw out any such di!erences. Prior to the
interview the respondents were given a full explanation of what to expect, the reasons
for the research and how the interview would be structured.
The topic and question areas were designed to enable us to collect information
about a number of issues, among which were:
1. Whether the type of service interaction has an in#uence on the way in which sta!
manage their emotions and how they do this.
2. Whether personalised service is more or less demanding in terms of emotional
labour than standardised service.
3. How far strict standardisation of the service encounter shields service providers
from abusive behaviour of customers or whether workers who can use their
initiative in controlling the service encounter experience fewer problems in this
regard.
4. Whether deep or surface acting is necessary to sustain performance in the two types
of service provision.
5. Whether sexual harassment is more or less likely in one type of service provision
than the other, and how it is experienced and managed when it occurs.

2. Findings
2.1. Use of standard scripts
Respondents were asked a series of questions about the existence of standardised
scripts. The aim was to discover whether sta! felt that the existence of a scripted
speech controlled the way in which the service interaction was performed or whether
they felt they had the opportunity to communicate freely with customers. Not

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surprisingly all the fast food workers felt constrained by the standard speech whereas
none of the traditional service workers had to use a rigid script. Follow up questions
to the fast food workers probed how they felt about the use of scripts. Go!man (1961)
suggested in his early work that props such as scripts were a protection to workers'
`selfa since they allowed the worker to distance himself/herself from the performance
and that scripts could be an asset when trying to create a well rehearsed and realistic
performance as they reduce the chance of &mishaps'. However Hochschild (1983) has
focused more on the way in which being required to use a script and behave in ways
alien to one's &true self' can have damaging consequences. Our fast food respondents
felt that the script was an asset; it enabled them to deliver a friendly service even at
very busy times and at the same time provided a barrier between themselves and the
customers. Some respondents pointed out that the script helped sta! who lacked
con"dence or social skills as it enabled them to know what to say and how to act. One
female worker, however, felt that she would prefer to be able to speak freely when
dealing with di$cult or demanding customers; the scripting reduced her ability to
manage or control this kind of interaction. Many of the respondents disagreed with
this though; they reported that they &sized' up customers before they reached the
counter and use the script in those cases where they perceived the customer might be
&di$cult'; other customers were dealt with on a more personal basis. Thus most of the
respondents attempted to personalise the service interaction somewhat by adding
their own personal interjections into the speech:
`By speaking to people as individuals you make the service interaction more real as
it stops you sounding like a robota male fast food worker.
Thus there is some indication that using a script does make workers feel uncomfortable as they feel it dehumanises both themselves and the customer. Nevertheless,
overall it seems that scripted speech helped sta! to perform e!ectively in front of
customers by limiting the demands placed upon them and giving them leverage over
the customers, and reducing the risk element in the interaction, as well as o!ering
psychic protection from the demeaning aspects of the job. They are not expected to
pretend to be their `true selfa during this kind of service; both they and their
customers are aware that they are `surface actinga.
Sta! at Silvers did not work with a standard script, so the discussion centred on
identifying what role boundaries and expectations guided their interactions with
customers and how they experienced these boundaries. We were also interested in
exploring further Hochschild's suggestion that more emotional labour is required
when sta! are expected to personalise the service interaction. All the respondents said
they felt that they had a certain degree of freedom regarding how the service
interaction was conducted, but pointed out that there were constraints on their
behaviour. They all felt that this freedom helped them to perform their job more
e!ectively and volunteered that they would feel uncomfortable and nervous if they
were required to follow a script. Expectations and boundaries centred on the requirement to be exceptionally polite and courteous to all guests and to treat each guest as
an individual:
`it is important that guests don't feel as though they are being treated as just
another name or numbera (waitress)

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In a similar way to the Speedy's respondents, sta! at Silvers said that they sized
guests up when they entered the restaurant, which helped them to treat the guests in
an appropriate manner.
`some want you to be friendly but others expect a formal service from you. Usually
you can "gure this out straight awaya. (waiter)
Everyone at Silvers placed a great deal of emphasis on giving the customer
a personalised service. Sta! were expected to change the &face' they adopted in order to
ful"l individual customer's expectations. At this restaurant the task of impression
management is a fundamental aspect of the job and thus the management of emotions
and the depersonalisation of workers feelings is much more of an issue for sta! than it
is in fast food work. They were required to deliver more `deep actinga; their conversations with customers had to appear genuine and authentic.
2.2. Codes of dress
We asked a series of questions about the signi"cance to the respondents of the
uniforms they were asked to wear. Whereas Go!man (1959) suggests that people
surface act more easily when they wear a uniform and that this prop provides
protection in a similar way to the existence of standard scripts, other writers have
suggested that uniforms can further demean and damage the sense of self (Ritzer, 1993;
Leidner, 1993).
Respondents at both restaurants were unanimous in feeling that wearing a uniform
led people to treat them di!erently. At Silver's the sta! are clearly identi"able and the
uniform for male and female sta! is di!erent. Waiters wore the standard black and
white waiting uniform but waitresses were expected to wear very short skirts and low
cut blouses. The uniform thus was experienced di!erently by male and female sta!:
female sta! said that it made them feel vulnerable in front of the guest and forced
a very sexual presentation of self which made many of them feel uncomfortable.
Several of the waitresses had experienced what they called `gropinga by male customers, especially during evening service, although they commented that accepting
this and dealing with it with a smile usually earned them high tips.
`customers don't bother to treat you as a persona (waitress)
`I feel that when I am in uniform it is part of my performance here. I act like the
person they expect to see, it's like being a character in the theatre. People are paying
a lot and they expect me to look and act in a certain waya (waitress)
Most of the sta! felt that the signi"cance of wearing a uniform was to clearly
identify to customers who were to wait and serve them. Many said that the uniform
gave them a sense of identity; others mentioned that this servile aspect of their job
`brought them down a levela. One waiter said:
`it places a barrier between the customer and server. The customer is given the
power and is always right and you are the insigni"cant onea.
At Speedy's, male and female crew members wore identical uniforms which limited
gender divisions and played down sexual di!erences. None of the sta! we talked to
had experienced sexual harassment by either customers or colleagues. Most of the
respondents said that their uniform signi"ed the company, and that it was a symbol of

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status which allowed customers to see clearly who was part of the management team
and who was a crew member. The respondents complained of the lack of respect and
the ridicule they received from customers once in uniform. One waitress felt that:
`People think they can be rude to you just because you work here. It's because they
don't know you, they only know your uniforma.
Both sets of service providers saw themselves as playing the character of servants
and said that once in uniform they felt powerless and servile. Both groups felt that
their uniforms signi"ed to customers someone to whom they could be rude and
abusive. At Speedy's, due to the tight scripting that sta! have to follow and thus their
dependence on management to deal with complaints, the uniform also signi"ed lack of
status. At Silver's, too, though sta! were able to converse freely with the customers,
the uniform seemed to place a barrier between sta! and customers, although in the
case of the female waitresses whose uniform was extremely feminised this was not
a protective barrier. Their uniform led to feelings of vulnerability, exposure and added
extra emotional work throughout the service interaction and they struggled to protect
their &self' from the advances of some customers and to convey where they drew the
line whilst at the same time attempting to meet expectations of courteousness.
2.3. Acting or authenticity?
Both Hochschild and Go!man (1969) suggest that service workers put on a performance. In Go!man's case, he suggests that the presentations we make are re#ections
of the expectations of our audience but that by using scripts and props the actors can
avoid revealing their true selves or exposing their selves to damage. Hochschild makes
a distinction between surface and deep acting. In surface acting (which is more or less
equivalent to Go!man's notion of impression management) service workers only act
as if they had the expected feelings whereas in deep acting workers force themselves to
feel what they ought to feel and thus "t their emotions into the social situation by
managing their feelings. Hochschild argues that workers whose emotions are
managed by their employers become alienated from their feelings in a process similar
to the alienation Marx described of factory workers from their own bodies and the
product of their labour. These workers have di$culty in experiencing themselves as
authentic even o! the job for they lose track of which feelings are really their own. She
argues that it is di$cult to maintain a sense of self when actions do not re#ect feelings
or when feelings must be manipulated to produce the required e!ect. There is the
additional problem of the content of the required behaviour. As Leidner (1993) has
noted, some routines may require workers to take on characteristics they themselves
value (patience, friendliness) but others may be more problematic (for example
phone-sex workers). In our encounters with others, especially with strangers, we make
assumptions about character and personality based on observed actions. Employees
who are asked to behave in ways which sti#e their natural responses have somehow to
come to terms with this contradiction between the way in which they see themselves
and wish to be seen by others and their behaviour. If they &put on an act', can they
avoid thinking of themselves in negative ways and avoid the damage to their
self-image in a culture which values personal authenticity? (Rojek, 1995). In some

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cases employers encourage their workers to remember that they are not the character
they are playing (i.e. they encourage role distance) but there are others, such as
Hochschild's airline stewardesses and Disneyworld employees who are required to be
the part they play.
An associated issue here is that sociologists believe that identity and a conception of
self are shaped by the treatment that a person is accorded. If restaurant workers are
treated with a lack of respect or with over-familiarity, then they must "nd ways to
protect their sense of self so that they can accept the demeaning treatment without
thinking of themselves as demeaned. Hochschild stresses the di$culties of protecting
oneself from the implications of treatment on the job: the constant e!ort to depersonalise situations leads to self-estrangement. However, Go!man (1959), Hughes
(1984) and Rollins (1985) have all suggested that people can develop strategies which
enable them to salvage a sense of control and self-esteem or even to construe
themselves as superior to those whose actions demean them.
Thus it seems that there is a wide range of responses theoretically possible to the
demands of emotional labour and we were interested in discovering which of these
responses if any were adopted by our two samples. In particular, we wanted to see if
there were signi"cant di!erences in the e!ects of emotional labour and in the
strategies workers in the two types of service adopted in their e!ort to draw the line.
All our respondents felt that they had to act while they were working and modify
their feelings and behaviour in line with the expectations of their customers.
Regardless of how they were actually feeling they were required to be constantly
polite, cheerful and courteous. They felt they had to contain their inner feelings. The
Speedy's workers said that this caused them the greatest di$culty when they were
faced with abusive customers and had to restrain their natural responses: one crew
member said:
`when I am confronted by customers I tense up. This is because I'm not having
a relationship with the customer, so I can't be myself. They see me as their servanta.
Other crew members said that the existence of scripted routines helped them to
distance themselves and be in a state of &emotional numbness' (Leidner, 1993). In other
words the script reminded them that they were simply acting a part and that their
work self was not their true self. Once they put on their uniform they divided their real
self from their on the job self and this went some way towards avoiding the kinds of
damage to self conception which can occur when workers are treated in demeaning
ways.
`I act a role, at work you are the face of Speedy's. You are here to do a job not be
yourself a male crew worker
At Silver's the customers expect a service which is highly personalised and considerable emotional energy had to be expended. Since there is no script, more of the real self
has to be put into each interaction. Nor does the uniform provide the sense of
protection experienced by the crew members; for female workers, as reported earlier,
high degrees of emotional labour are engendered due to sexual innuendo, suggestive
jokes, unwanted bodily contact and so on. These behaviours on the part of customers
must be managed and controlled without revealing the waitress's true feelings.
Additionally, sta! at Silver's must act in a way which seems authentic, that is, they

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must not appear to be only acting. This is a double bind which the crew members do
not have to deal with to the same degree, since for the most part customers at fast food
outlets are aware that they are receiving standardised routines. One strategy which
was available to Silver's sta! was to make use of &backstage'; periods when they were
out of sight of the customers and could let o! steam to fellow sta! members about
particular customers. Here they were able to &get their own back', or recover their
sense of self both by their words, and occasionally their deeds. Go!man (1959) stresses
the importance of team work in this respect; by creating high in-group solidarity
a social community is created amongst service workers which gives each worker
moral support when performing and also when backstage. The use of social games
and practical jokes behind the scenes in restaurants is well documented (Barsoux,
1993; Gabriel, 1988) and our research suggested that it plays a crucial role in helping
workers to protect their identity.
`By mocking the audience, the performer can show not only that he is not bound by
the o$cial interaction but also that he has this interaction so much under control that
he can toy with it at willa (Go!man, 1959, p. 185)
This strategy is not, of course, so readily available to crew members since they are
visible to customers at all times whilst they are working. The only &backstage' they
have is when they take a rest break and the opportunities they have to get their own
back on speci"c customers is extremely limited due to the visibility of their actions and
the short time in which service is conducted. However, when there was a particularly
troublesome or slow customer, crew members would roll their eyes at one another,
make gestures behind their backs or grin. However, even this muted response had to
be carefully managed so that it was out of sight of both the customer and the shift
manager and there was a further constraint in the widely held belief amongst crew
members that some customers were &stooges' sent by Head o$ce to check that they
were performing their routines correctly.
2.4. Departures from script
One of the areas we were interested in was whether di!erent kinds of service
workers coped with emotional labour in di!erent ways. We felt that it was possible
that workers who were bound by a script might defend themselves by demonstrating
what Stinchcombe (1990) has called their ethnomethodolgical competence; that is,
their ability to use their social skills to control and personalise interactions. In
contrast we thought that workers who were required to provide a highly authentic
and personalised performance would attempt to depersonalise their interactions in
various ways.
Respondents at Silver's used a formulaic approach to provide the necessary degree
of &personalisation', for example always asking customers how they were, whether
they were enjoying their meal, etc. but drew the line at involving themselves with the
customer. One waitress said:
`If you sell yourself all the time you end up losing your identity. You must hold
a part of you back. You don't want to end up being just part of the meal experience.
You need to learn to keep respect for yourselfa.

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Thus workers at Silver's detached themselves from their performance as much as

possible. In contrast respondents at Speedy's placed more emphasis on getting
a positive response from the customers and claimed that doing this made them feel
better about themselves; they disliked appearing to behave `like a bunch of robotsa.
Whilst some customers simply wanted to place their order and receive it as quickly as
possible with the minimum of interaction, others were more willing to engage in some
personal exchange. However, the workers were very limited in this because of the
premium placed on speed of service. They particularly disliked it when they were told
to promote a special o!er to all customers, since they felt silly asking people who had,
for example, ordered a full meal if they would like to try the special o!er. When they
had to do this it became even more obvious that they were reciting from a script rather
than engaging in an authentic interaction.
Thus it seems that in standardised service jobs workers do feel the need to
personalise the service in order to retain their individual character and defend their
&self ', whereas those in highly personalised authentic service contexts feel the need to
estrange themselves from their performance and keep their true selves hidden from the
customer's view through deep acting.

3. Conclusions and discussion

Both kinds of service work seem to require considerable emotional labour but on
the basis of this very small study it seems that there are distinct di!erences between
standardised and personalised service work. It is impossible to say which of the two
kinds is more demanding, more stressful or more damaging since di!erent strategies
are available to workers in di!erent social contexts. Although this research was small
scale and caution must therefore be exercised it does seem to throw up some issues
which are worthy of further exploration.
Firstly, to what extent is training given which deals with these issues? In the USA,
according to research by Leidner (1993) and Hochschild (1983), companies such as
airlines, insurance companies using &cold' sales strategies, and Disneyworld give very
speci"c training on this aspect of the work and vary considerably in what they expect
from workers. For example some companies encourage workers to remember that
they are only playing a part, whereas others expect their workers to become the part
they are playing. Our research suggests that there is a lack of guidance and training in
this aspect of service work in the two companies we studied; it seems that there might
be opportunities here to provide workers with some help on how to manage their
emotions e!ectively and to help them "nd strategies they feel comfortable with to
draw the line.
Associated with this is the question of the recruitment and selection of workers; is
the ability to present oneself as the Company wishes (looks, demeanour, and personal
style) becoming more central than other sorts of skills for these workers? If so, there
may be issues of equal opportunity to be addressed. The Hospitality Industry has been
documented as lacking laid down procedures in personnel matters and as managing
more on the basis of `gut feelingsa (Price, 1994). Sta! are rarely recruited in a way

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which measures `objectivea criteria, but more often on the strength of whether the
candidate will `"t ina, or has the `righta personality. This strategy is more understandable when emotional as well as physical and mental labour is considered, but
nevertheless it is bound to disadvantage some applicants (Purcell, 1993; Filby, 1992).
It would be interesting to see what the impact of emotional labour might be on
hotel workers, especially those who live in. If workers live at their place of work does
this make it more di$cult for them to maintain a non-work self and to depersonalise
their experiences at work, or does the existence of a sort of occupational community
(Shamir, 1981) mitigate the demands of emotional labour?
There may also be further implications when a culturally diverse workforce is used.
Some cultural groups may "nd it more or less easy or acceptable to meet the demands
of emotional labour. In Western cultures, particularly in the era which has come to be
called &post-modern', there has been a preoccupation with personal and experiential
authenticity. People look for &real' experiences etc. (Rojek, 1995). The paradox is, of
course, that increasingly experiences are standardised and routinised in the name of
e$ciency. Consumers want to feel that they are receiving a personal service in their
leisure pursuits even though they have usually accepted that this will not the case
when they are, for example, dealing with Government bureaucracies. In spite of this
workers who are required to manipulate their own and the customers' feelings may
experience di$culty with the &phoniness' of their behaviour. In other cultures, in
contrast, there is not this preoccupation with personal authenticity, but rather
a concern with &face'. In these cultures, e.g. Japan, the gap between true intentions and
feelings and the facade which one presents is accepted and valued as a way of helping
people through social situations. In a study of Japanese geishas, Dalby (1983) shows
that the emotion work demanded of the geishas was not a challenge to their sense of
authenticity in the way that it would be in Western cultures. The Japanese concept of
honne versus tatemae (the truly felt rather than the socially required) allows them to
see this dichotomy as a necessity of civilised life. `The Japanese know that certain
kinds of social situations demand tatemae. There is nothing insincere about facadesa
(Dalby, 1983: 157). This may also have particular implications for constructions of
gender. In many cases, including the two we investigated, the routines draw on widely
accepted understandings of how men and women behave, and thus can serve to
bolster the taken-for-granted status of these beliefs. Where a job embodies assumptions about proper gendered behaviour, workers must &do' gender in a particular way.
(Berk, 1985). A worker's attitude towards his or her job, their motivation to it and
their willingness to stay may depend on how far they feel comfortable with these
gender assumptions (as well as on the actual job tasks, working conditions, etc.). In
Silver's the female workers were required to present themselves in a way which made
them feel uncomfortable since their demeanour and dress had to conform to very
traditional and sexualised assumptions about gender.
Since Braverman's (1974) work it has been widely accepted that jobs have become
increasingly deskilled and devoid of content and decision making and this analysis of
work has been extended into the service sector by many writers. However, for those
who have experience of work in hotels and restaurants there has been considerable
resistance to the notion that these jobs are amenable to the same process of deskilling

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D. Seymour / Hospitality Management 19 (2000) 159}171

as jobs in the manufacturing sector. Although it is clear that work in fast food has
been standardised and that job tasks have little complexity or scope for discretion, we
think that the concept of emotional labour does help to resolve this feeling that the
concept of deskilling does not quite capture the realities of service work. There are
distinctive aspects to the routinisation of interactive service work. In order to
routinise this sort of work employers must transform worker's identities, ways of
thinking, of presenting themselves, appearance and sources of motivation. The e!orts
of workers in manufacturing industries to resist the attempts by employers to deskill
their work were underestimated by Braverman (Thompson, 1990; Rubery, 1980): we
must be careful to investigate whether and how the workers in di!erent kinds of
interactive service work resist employers' e!orts to shape their consciousness, identity
and behaviour by providing their own justi"cations and interpretations of their
experiences, and developing strategies to defend their personal authenticity.

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About the author

Diane Seymour B.Sc. Hons Sociology (Univ. of London), M.A. Sociology (Univ.
Kent), M.I.L. (French), is Senior lecturer in Social Science in the School of Hotel
and Restaurant Management at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK. Current
research interests are in emotional labour in the hospitality industry and in the
international student experience.