Waiting tables: Communicative practices and training in a service occupation

The notions that waitresses (and waiters) are ignorant and unskilled, and that waiting on tables contributes little to society are not new. Diner waitressing historically has been portrayed as a questionable line of work especially for women. Waitressing is part of a larger category refered to as “interactive service” work, and includes any kind of work which fundamentally involves face-to-face or voice-to-voice interactions and conscious manipulation of self-presentation. As distinguished from white-collar service work, this category of “emotional proletariat” is comprised primarily of home healthcare workers, retail sales workers, hotel workers, cashiers, flight attendants, taxi drivers, package delivery drivers, and waitresses among others The general consensus is that waitressing and other similar kinds of employment are “mindless” involving routine and repetitive tasks that require little education. During the 20th century such sentiment lead to the development of a new service ideology that resulted in standardized corporate and institutional training programs designed to control the way interactive service workers interacted with their customers. Extensive research has revealed how management attempts to control workers' behavior, and “deskill” the labor process. Regarding the interactive services in particular, “Emotional labor” is the most important concept for explaining how management goes about controlling workers' behavior.; But “Emotional Labor” also is a useful heuristic for explaining the actual practices of interactive service work. In addition to considering how management controls, or doesn't, workers' behavior, this dissertation also considers the practices of interactive service work. The most important features to the practice of “Emotional Labor” are language and communication. Language and literacy skills are little understood in the interactive service workplace, yet are readily defined and categorized by institutions, governing bodies and corporate entities. How language is spoken, read or written in a restaurant may be vastly different from how it is used in a classroom. How the waitress or waiter understands and uses texts such as the menu or food order ticket and how she or he “reads” and verbally interacts with the customer reflect carefully constructed uses of language and literacy. My research investigates these issues with a focus on waiters and waitresses who work in diners.