Class Acts. Rachel Sherman

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      Less obviously, these jobs also vary according to the tangibility of the product. Workers in the front of the house provide most of the elements of interactive service, which consists mainly of intangible emotional labor (personalization, needs anticipation and compliance, and deference) as well as visible physical labor. Workers in the back of the house, in contrast, primarily produce the noninteractive elements of recognition, mainly invisible physical labor. Their products—clean rooms, turned-down beds, hot food, and so on—are tangible (though usually not portable, as most material goods are, because they cannot be taken off the premises).

      Wages and working conditions vary between these two groups, as we will see in more detail in subsequent chapters (also see appendix C for wages in my sites). Back of house workers are paid less than front of house workers as a rule (one or two dollars less per hour in my sites). Many interactive workers regularly received tips (and sometimes commissions), which was less common for back of house workers (except for room service servers). All of these differences have consequences for workers’ experience of work. As we have seen, back of house workers are more highly regulated and tightly supervised, while front of house workers have more autonomy and control over their work. At the same time, invisible workers are not required to interact often with guests, while interactive workers must offer more self-subordination.⁵⁴ Table 1 summarizes the key characteristics of these areas.

      This division of labor maps onto demographic distinctions.⁵⁵ (See appendix C.) Front of house workers are usually white (though bellpersons and door attendants, who perform more physical labor, are often men of color). Workers in the back of the house are generally people of color, often immigrants from a wide range of countries. These distinctions held at the Royal Court, though the norm for front of house workers did not hold at the Luxury Garden; there, those workers were more diverse, many of them Asian and Asian American. Back of house jobs are usually stratified by gender (turndown attendants and room cleaners are always women), as are certain front of house positions (bellpersons, valets, and door attendants are almost always men). However, both men and women perform front desk and concierge work.⁵⁶

       The Back of the House: Invisible Workers

      Workers in the back of the house provide few of the interactive elements of service, for their primary role is to furnish invisible physical labor. Room cleaners and turndown attendants display labor by doing the myriad tasks involved in both morning and evening maid service. As I have suggested, the maintenance of the room's aesthetic, particular to luxury service, indicates labor. Luxurious appointments create extra work for housekeepers not found in nonluxury hotels; they change the covers of down duvets every day, replace ten towels, tie sashes of bathrobes, and so on.⁵⁷ These workers also implemented guest preferences by leaving special amenities or objects in the rooms, but they did this on the order of managers.

TABLE 1 Comparison of Front and Back of House Work Characteristics

      ^aConcierge, front desk worker, door attendant, bellperson, valet.

      ^bRoom cleaner, turndown attendant, laundry worker.

      ^cReservationist, telephone operator, runner, room service server and order taker.

      ^dThese characteristics vary according to the hotel's location.

      Hence, as I have said, the product these workers provide is tangible. As a result, their work is easily routinized. Room cleaners and turndown attendants are given a certain number of rooms to clean or turn down each day, which for room cleaners rarely varies. Management gives workers extremely detailed specifications on what the room should look like, including how many hangers belong in the closet, how to tie the sashes of bathrobes, and where to place amenities and towels in the bathroom or items on the desk and bedside table. Room cleaners often train one another and over time develop their own preferences as to when to do different tasks and which implements to use. Once they find the fastest individual system, however, most do not vary it much from day to day or room to room. They do make some small choices, such as whether to replace a bedsheet when they notice a tiny hole or a stain. And guest behavior, which determines the time housekeepers can enter the room as well as the effort necessary to clean it, does introduce variation into their work. But in general these workers exercise very little discretion.

      As a consequence of this tangibility and quantifiable “output,” room cleaners are also easily monitored. Although room cleaners generally work alone, supervisors examine the rooms they have cleaned, holding glasses up to the light to look for spots or running a finger along the windowsills checking for dust. Supervisors are inconsistent about this task, because the amount of time they have to inspect rooms varies daily. However, room cleaners do not know when their rooms will be checked, and clear standards make measurement of performance very simple.

      Furthermore, tangibility makes back of house workers vulnerable to guest complaints. Guests frequently call the housekeeping office or the front desk to complain about problems in the room or services they have failed to receive. Housekeepers (and even supervisors) in my sites lived in fear of guest dissatisfaction and remembered seemingly small incidents for years afterward. Socorro, a room cleaner with whom I worked at the Royal Court, was especially anxious about guest complaints. She worried about acquiring a “bad reputation” when there was a mark on the wall in one room, though she had reported it to the supervisor. She put extra soap in one room, even though there was some in the shower, because she said it was the kind of thing guests might complain about. Workers sometimes feared misunderstanding guests because of the language barrier.⁵⁸ It is notable that these housekeeping workers, who had least contact with guests, were most afraid of their complaints.

      In addition to their highly regulated work, these workers were especially dependent on their employment at the hotel, because they had few labor market options. Housekeeping workers spoke little English, usually lacked higher education, and frequently told me they had “no choice” when I asked them if they enjoyed their jobs. They primarily liked working at the hotel, not for the content of the work, but because they had good benefits and consistent days off, which was crucial to organizing their child care. Some of them had also suffered much worse in their home countries or as recent immigrants.⁵⁹ For all of these reasons, these workers were fairly easily controlled by managers.

       Semivisible Workers

      Some work is neither exactly visible nor invisible. Room reservationists, telephone operators, room service workers, and housekeeping runners have frequent guest contact, but it is either fleeting (for runners and room service delivery people) or telephonic (for telephone operators, room reservationists, and room service order takers). In my sites, these workers were housed in different departments and not generally thought of as all belonging to the same category. Room reservationists and telephone operators have more in common with front of house workers in terms of their race (they are primarily white) and the intangibility of their work.⁶⁰ Runners and room service workers in both hotels were more akin to housekeepers, in that their work involved a tangible product and they were almost all immigrants of color. However, the labor processes of all these workers share some common elements and differ from either “pure” front of house or back of house work. Hence I call them semi-visible workers.

      These jobs are most similar to those Leidner discusses in her study of fast food.⁶¹ Although the McDonald's employees she focuses on worked in the “front of the house” at the counter, their jobs were similarly routine and involved only brief contact with clients. Also, both semivisible hotel workers and fast food workers СКАЧАТЬ