Increasingly, companies want loving the job to be part of the job (though they're less eager to pay for it). But when our required professional persona is at odds with our selves, we all suffer. Is there a solution?
Sooner or later, most jobs require us to exhibit some emotion that we don't necessarily feel. Flight attendants and waiters are supposed to smile when they hand you a drink; bill collectors are supposed to scare you into coming across with the cash. Nurses and preschool teachers are supposed to be comforting, even loving. When your job requires playing a part, though, it's hard to figure out where you begin and your job ends. The experience can be alienating, even dehumanizing.
Award-winning UC Berkeley sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild, in her book The Managed Heart, coined the term "emotional labor" to describe the curious situation where "seeming to love the job becomes part of the job."
This concept has been in the air lately. Josh Eidelson wrote in The Nation about D.C.-area Starbucks baristas exhorted to support a corporate pro-austerity campaign by physically writing a slogan on cups. "CEOs hawking 'shared sacrifice' are a dime a dozen," Eidelson noted. "A working-class seal of approval is much more valuable, even if--like so much in the American workplace--it’s coerced."
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