Page 122 - The Disneyization of Society

PERFORMATIVE LABOUR

The article also hints that the pressure to exhibit such behaviour was in large part
motivated by the fact that the cabin crews on one of its main competitors on
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trans-Atlantic routes – Virgin – are much more inclined to employ the kinds of
behaviour that BA is described as being keen to encourage.

Shop workers

Shop staff are increasingly being encouraged to exhibit emotional labour. Perhaps
one of the best known examples of this is Body Shop International. The company
has long been known for its strong corporate culture and its use of training
programmes as a means of getting that culture across and to secure commitment
to it. Body Shop staff have been described as frequently engaging in emotional
labour throughout the organization, not just in its shops. 47 One new recruit says
that during her training

We … watch a sales video called Smile Dammit Smile, in which a very straight-faced blonde from
head office comes on the screen to tell us that we should try saying the word ‘yippee’ to ourselves
before we go on to the shop floor. ‘It’s a silly word and it will put a nice bright smile on your face.’ 48

Supermarket staff also have to cultivate such outward (and preferably inward)
displays of emotion. Wal-Mart’s friendly people greeters who are situated at the
entrance to its stores (an idea adopted by Disney for its Disney Stores) are an illus-
tration of the penetration of emotional labour into this area of retailing. ESPN
Zone in Chicago also uses smiling people greeters. 49 The Wal-Mart greeters often
wear a smiley face on the back of their uniforms, so that the shopper is met with
a smile no matter which way the greeter is facing. Tolich studied the work of
clerks in a supermarket (referred to as ‘Raley’s’) in a rural area of California. He
notes that the clerks were instructed to be friendly to customers and the training
manual was explicit:

It takes only a few kind words for customers to remember Raley’s. In the checkstand it takes a smile,
a friendly attitude, courteous service, accuracy, speed, and good appearance to make a customer
want to come back to Raley’s. You may be the last contact with customers as they leave the store.
Make it pleasant and memorable. 50

Similarly, at a national chain of convenience stores in place of a general request
for clerks to be friendly to its customers, they were given training which
‘instructed them to greet, smile at, establish eye contact with, and say “thank
you” to every customer’. 51
British supermarket chains have also sought to inject emotional labour into the
service transaction, as the reference on p. 110 to the research by Rosenthal et al.
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suggests. A study of four British supermarket chains by Ogbonna and Wilkinson
found that three of the four groups had developed customer care programmes in
which emotional labour was a central ingredient; the fourth chain competed on