Small treats: retail service work from a consumer’s perspective

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to critique labour process theories with regard to their interpretation of aesthetic symbolic service experience, especially in the light of the 'co-production' of service by both workers and consumers. In particular this thesis is concerned to understand how and why workers might achieve agency in institutions that attempt to manage aesthetics closely. This thesis argues that'co-production' of service is a crucial point of focus for labour relations study because the consumer, in service work, is a significant part of the production system, as both applied management and critical commentators alike have claimed (e.g., Ritzer, 1999; Fitzsimmons & Fitzsimmons, 2001). As a result, meanings assigned to work are being commoditised (Bauman, 1998; Sternberg 1998; Ritzer, 1999; 2001) especially in the area of aesthetic work (Nickson, Warhurst & Watt,2000; Warhurst, Nickson, Witz & Cullen, 2000; Sturdy, Grugulis & Willmott, 2001). The significance of culture and symbolic exchange in contemporary economic and social life results in what Lash & Urry ( 1994) have called the 'economy of signs', and du Gay & Pryke (2002) have referred to as 'cultural economy'. This is a literature-based research project, supplemented by an auto-ethnography of shopping encounters. Using a method of shopping, I use everyday mundane encounters with both artefacts and people in the shopping mall system in order to render the service experience 'problematic' (Smith, 1988). Using shopping as a point of focus, the literature on the labour process (Burawoy, 1979; du Gay, 1996) is'held in tension'with the literature on consumption (Miller,1999; Jackson, 1999), in order to promote theoretical synthesis. This thesis shows how the malls investigated provide a context for pseudo-community (Dovey, 1999). This pseudo-community is governed by rules of conduct that regulate all activity in the mall to provide a homogenised idealised context for middle-class consumers (Bourdieu, 1994; Christopherson, 1994). This system produces a façade that is difficult, but not impossible, to contest and make use of for alternative purposes (Fiske, 1989b; Bourdieu & Wacquant,1992; Backes, 1997). The 'shop floor' culture is one of consumer culture (Lury, 1996). I argue that workers (and the predominantly female consumer involved in self-service domestic labour) reward themselves with 'small treats' in compensation for their labours in the shopping mall system. Following Burawoy, but drawing also on Miller (1999), I argue 'small treats', like 'making out', act to construe consent to the shopping mall production system. I also draw attention to the ways that conceptions of work have been broadened through processes of commoditisation and the need to see the workplace as a 'servicescape' (Sherry, 1998).