Page 158 - The Disneyization of Society

CONTROL AND SURVEILLANCE

random checks and also responded to customer complaints. 56 In addition, team
leaders listened to calls. The main focus of monitoring was on reducing the
149
amount of time an employee spent on calls if his or her typical time was above
average. This suggests that many call centre staff are caught between a rock and a
hard place, in that they must exhibit the correct approach in terms of emotional
labour but not take too long over it. The fact that they are increasingly required
not to be slaves to scripts but to be themselves and vary their approach to deal-
ing with customers means that a further dilemma is built into their work in con-
nection with its surveillance. 57
A further way in which hardware can be employed for monitoring of service
workers is through CCTV. This hardware is usually installed in order to detect
shoplifters and other external miscreants but is frequently also introduced to
watch staff. Pilferage is one reason for watching staff but some firms extend this
watching brief to include the monitoring of customer service. This is an example
of the ‘leaky container’ phenomenon, whereby surveillance used for one purpose
is gradually extended to include other goals and targets. 58 A study of the use of
CCTV in firms in a northern British town found that in the retail stores that were
in the sample, this hardware was often employed to scrutinize customer service
standards among staff. One security manager in a store claimed that he found
CCTV useful for ensuring ‘that the staff are being polite, friendly and are smil-
ing’. 59 At another retailer, the researchers were told that it was used to check on
‘customer care’: ‘It’s how you are with the customer. You know, your eye contact
and things like that.’ 60
The four different forms of surveillance sometimes overlap, for example, when
bogus shoppers are captured on CCTV in interaction with a targeted service
worker. However, they are analytically distinct and point to a powerful armoury
of methods at the disposal of service firms.

Resistance

As I signalled at the outset of this chapter, it is important not to generate an
unduly deterministic account of the significance of control and surveillance
under Disneyization. Both customers and workers can hit back if they so choose,
perhaps sometimes unconsciously. The examples that I provide are ones that
occur during what might be thought of as the micropolitics of interaction, but
resistance is also possible at a more macropolitical level. The case of the failure of
the Disney’s America theme park to get off the ground, in spite of the company’s
continued protestations that it would not back down (see Chapter 1), is an illus-
tration of the way in which Disneyization – in the form of its tendency both to
bring nature to heel and to provide a bowdlerized version of history – can be
resisted.