Class Acts. Rachel Sherman

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СКАЧАТЬ if we are demanding. But they never made you feel like you were asking them anything more than what they could willingly do for you…. They never batted an eye.” Kim told me, “It's nice when you forget your toothbrush or something. Just to call up and say, can I get one, and they bring it to you…. Like when they ask you, can they take your bags, whether you want it or not…. ‘I'll be happy to get that for you.’ If you need some aspirin or you need some—just really anything, they'll just bring it to your room as opposed to you having to get it.”

      When workers withheld labor, guests often reacted unfavorably. Several people I interviewed and many hotel comment cards characterized as “bad experiences” episodes when they had to wait for staff or when dishes were not picked up around the hotel, and negative comment cards were full of criticism about failures of labor. One irate Luxury Garden guest wrote a letter complaining that the hotel's staff had disappointed him by, among other things, not providing the American cheese he preferred with his eggs and not offering to go out and buy him cigarettes when the hotel's gift shop did not carry his brand. (This was a failure of personalization and legitimation as well as one of labor, because his individual needs were not acknowledged.) I violated the code of unlimited labor when a couple staying at the Royal Court asked me to wrap flowers they had ordered for their room so they could take them home; I responded, “I'll deal with it,” prompting the man to comment to his wife (right in front of me), “‘Deal with it’—that makes it sound like a problem.”

      Clients could also be extremely sensitive to transgressions of their own entitlement not to perform labor. For example, in 1999, the Luxury Garden placed cards in the bathrooms suggesting that clients who did not want their towels changed every day for environmental reasons hang them up, whereas if they did want them changed to leave them on the floor. The hotel received “a flood” of negative comment cards in protest, according to the general manager. He described the attitude that they communicated: “I pay top dollar, I shouldn't have to worry about this.” Andrew associated his own exertion of labor with a lack of intimacy: “When you're standing in line, I mean, it's a little colder, a little more matter of fact.”

      Guests also interpreted labor exerted on their behalf as “personal” service. In telling me about a luxury resort in Asia, Andrew said:

      The beach boys, they just almost hover around you. They put the towel around the pad on the beach [chair]. Of course, the first thing they ask you is if they can bring you a drink and you get that. They come around periodically with towels that have been soaked in some sort of smelling water, rose water, and put in the freezer, because it's so hot. And you kind of cool off with that. Again, it's a special personal service more than anything else. It isn't the size of the room, it is not the amenities. I mean, I don't think I've mentioned the word TV or VCR or that type of thing. It's the feeling of getting personal service.

      Even objects communicate to the guests a sense of personalization, though they are also demonstrations of labor. Kim, a young business traveler, said of the bowl of fruit in the room, “It's as if they're saying, ‘Oh, we knew you were coming.’” To Mike, room amenities associated with frequent stays communicated, “We're glad you're back.” A guest of the Luxury Garden wrote on a comment card, “I am very impressed…. Very nice personal touches with the fruit and the bathroom facilities” (emphasis added).

      While guests often appreciated the small touches in the hotel, they never described these as involving work. For example, Shirley liked a hotel where “apples would appear at one o'clock in the afternoon” (emphasis added). Instead, guests (like managers) often referred to these efforts as “attention to detail.” Asked what he liked about luxury service, Herbert responded: “Attentiveness to detail. They pay attention to small things. If you went into the dining room to get a newspaper at breakfast, they would all be lined up in a nice little straight row. There would be no crumpled ones, you know. The flowers are going to be real flowers, and there aren't going to be a bunch of petals lying on the table next to it.” Everything this guest mentions involves labor, but he does not acknowledge that. Instead, he perceives these practices as indicators of aesthetic attentiveness.

      Labor involving interaction, as we have seen, is supposed to appear voluntary on the part of the worker; noninteractive labor is supposed to remain invisible. When a guest at the Royal Court requested that red rose petals be strewn about his room as a surprise for his girlfriend, for example, he probably did not imagine that Ginger and Inga would spend an hour or so methodically yanking the heads off the long-stemmed flowers. When “invisible” labor was made apparent, guests often became uncomfortable. As one guest I interviewed, Sally, said, “I expect not to be bothered…if they want to turn down the beds, just make sure I'm not there.” Here she indicates not only that labor must remain invisible but also that she prefers to imagine that the workers turned down the beds because they desired to rather than because it was their job. If the occupants were in the room when the turndown attendant knocked on the door, they almost always requested that she come back later or refused the service altogether. On the couple of occasions I witnessed in which the guests allowed the housekeeper (and me) into the room, they stood around awkwardly waiting for her to finish the service. (These were also the only occasions when I saw turndown attendants receive tips.) As I wrote in my notes after one of my first turndown shifts, “Most people were pretty nice but a tiny bit irritated at being interrupted. It's weird because it's a fine line—we are trying to do something nice for them, but it only works if it's done in kind of a mysterious way. If not, then we are just bothering them.”

       “They Really Care”: Deference and Sincerity

      Luxury service is not only about what workers do; it is also about how they do it. As the examples I have given indicate, workers in my research sites were required to demonstrate a range of emotions in their demeanor. First, they had to display deference to guests. They had to call guests “Mr. X,” for example, while guests used workers’ first names. Workers were also required to smile at guests, regulate their own appearance, and allow guests to initiate and terminate interactions, thereby occupying a “subordinate service role.”⁴⁰ The deference imperative also inheres in the more elaborate strategies of legitimation and unlimitedness I have mentioned. Managers told workers, “There is no right or wrong, only the guest's perspective.” Second, as I have shown, workers were required to display enthusiasm, appearing eager to exert labor on guests’ behalf. As Arlie Hochschild wrote of flight attendants, “Seeming to love the job becomes part of the job.”⁴¹

      Most important, however, was that workers appear sincere in their concern for guests. The Royal Court's service handbook directed workers to “show genuine care and concern for guests’ needs.” One Luxury Garden service standard instructed workers to “engage guests with eye contact and a warm, sincere smile.” Alice, the training manager at the Luxury Garden, told workers that guests need to perceive “that you care, that you care I [the guest] am here, and you're going to do your best to make sure I'm happy…. [Guests] need to know they can trust you to do what they need.” Managers also encouraged workers to see guests as dependent, casting them as tired after traveling or as disoriented in a new city and therefore deserving of sympathy.

      Guests also identified genuine care as a central part of luxury service.⁴² Betty said, “I guess the biggest thing is, people want your stay to be comfortable, and they don't just say that. They really do.” She immediately gave the example of doormen allowing her to leave her car at the curb instead of parking in the garage, as would have been required in a less upscale hotel; for her, genuine care was related to the sense of breaking rules and accommodating needs. As he approached the front desk, an older guest at the Royal Court said to Jasmine and me, “What perfect smiles! That's a real smile, right?”

      Some guests contrasted sincerity to routinized interaction, which they viewed with distaste. As Adam put it, “I think good service begins at the front desk…. With a welcome that seems sincere…where people look at you, look you in the eye, instead of looking down at the computer and handing you a card without СКАЧАТЬ