Informal Power
Besides having the ultimate say in formal matters such as scheduling, hiring, and firing, male managers sustain dominance at Bazooms in other, more subtle, ways. Eleanor LaPointe (1992:382) identifies a number of “interactional techniques” often used by men to sustain dominance and maintain the inferior status of women. At Bazooms such power was exercised by the use of derogatory terms of address, disciplinary actions, direct orders, threats, general avoidance of waitresses’ concerns, cynicism, and even humiliation. For instance, the fact that female employees between the ages of eighteen and thirty are called girls by Bazooms managers and customers alike is an example of such an “interactional technique” used to sustain dominance. Everyone knows that the managers (all men in their twenties and thirties) are not to be called boys (neither are the “kitchen guys” to be called boys). Yet, by seeing and addressing the “low-status” employees as girls (based upon the “Bazooms girl” concept), one can retain dominance as a manager or customer (since waitresses are referred to by all as Bazooms girls) and maintain the subordinate status of female employees. Humiliating comments during the work shift about personal appearance from managers is another example of an interactional technique causing Bazooms girls to feel that they aren’t respected or that they are treated poorly. In the words of one (Trina): [The management] has no respect for any of us waitresses. No respect.
Gender
It has already been established that Bazooms is a “gendered workplace,” where, according to MacKinnon (1980), women “tend to be employed in occupations that are considered ‘for women,’ to be men’s subordinates on the job and to be paid less than men both on the average and for the same work.”
Behavior Rules
Management codes and guidelines shape gendered identities in work environments. At Bazooms, women work as “girls.” According to one Bazooms manager: What differentiates us from every other restaurant in the marketplace are the Bazooms girls. That’s the reason that there’s a Bazooms concept, that’s the reason that we’re successful….
The following are Bazooms girl guidelines selected from the employee handbook:
Wholesome-looking, All American cheerleading types (the kind you would be proud to take home to mother). Prom-like appearance.
Hair should always be styled. The girls are always “on stage” and should be camera ready at all times.
Make-up needs to be worn. It should not be excessive, and at the same time it needs to highlight her natural features.
Always smiling, extremely friendly and courteous.
Always should appear to be having a great time.
Extremely attentive to all customers….
Simultaneously she is “the girl next door,” the “cheerleader,” the “actress” (always camera ready), the “good daughter” (attentive, subservient), the “prom queen,” and the shining, happy personality. One waitress said matter-of-factly: It’s like they [managers] have an ideal image in their heads of us (Katy). With all of these demands placed upon her, the Bazooms girl is constantly in the process of learning how to adapt to the company’s expectations, and acting out her gender (according to men’s rules).
Appearance Rules
It is clear from these guidelines that the “Bazooms girl” role embodies what are seen as traditionally “feminine” (in this case, many “girlish”) qualities. One way gender is symbolized is through uniform style, which, according to LaPointe (1992), “incorporates a gendered meaning into the work” (p. 382).6 The uniforms, short shorts, and choice of tight tank top, crop, or tight T-shirt, may be part of the popular “beach theme,” which Bazooms likes to accentuate, but it carries gendered meaning as well. Few men, if any, work in what is considered a “neighborhood restaurant” wearing a size too small dolphin shorts and a shirt showing off his midriff and chest.7 But for a woman this is “beach wear,” revealing her truly feminine characteristics.
Barbara Reskin and Patricia Roos (1987:9) argue that the “sexual division of labor is grounded in stereotypes of innate sex differences in traits and abilities, and maintained by gender-role socialization and various social control mechanisms.”… The director of training at Bazooms advised new hires to look like you are going on a date. You were chosen because you all are pretty. But I say makeup makes everyone look better. Push-up bras make everyone look better. And we all want to look our best. These “feminine ideals” not only define “the perfect” Bazooms girl, but are used by management to constantly reify femininity in the workplace through the dissemination of “rules” and the use of discipline to uphold these rules. In this way, through interaction, not only power relations but gender roles are constantly being defined and redefined in the workplace.
Emotional Labor
The gendered workplace demands more than manipulation of behavior and appearance. Arlie Hochschild’s (1979) ethnography of flight attendants introduces another type of labor that is common in female-dominated occupations, which she dubs “emotional labor.” Emotional labor requires one to induce or suppress feeling in order to sustain an outward countenance that produces the desired state of mind in others (Hochschild 1983:7). Thus, emotion workers must always “display” an image that is determined by management, and “over time ‘display’ comes to assume a certain relation to feeling” (p. 90). Hochschild found that emotion workers, over time, may become estranged from their true feelings, which are ignored, disguised, or created in order to achieve a desired image.8
Hochschild’s notion of “display” and manipulation of feeling can be found at Bazooms, especially among the female employees. According to management, the Bazooms girl, when on the floor, is expected to “perform as if [she] is on stage.” This means embodying a specific image, sustaining an outward countenance, and behaving in specific ways. One manager with whom I spoke put it this way:
Well, after working eight years I can pretty much tell who will be perfect for the job and who won’t. [By looking at them?] Well, by talking with them and seeing what type of personality they have. You know, they must be performers as Bazooms girls. Nobody can be bubbly that long, but when you’re working you put on an act.
As Greta Paules (1991:160) put it, “By furnishing the waitress with a script, a costume, and a backdrop of a servant, the restaurant is encouraging her to become absorbed in her role—to engage in deep acting.” …
The corporate image that Bazooms projects of happy, sexy, eager-to-serve workers is what sells. What became clear to me on one of my first days on the job was that emotional labor is demanded not only by management, but by customers as well. For instance, one afternoon I approached a table full of marines without a smile or a “Can I help you?” look on my face. Their first words to me were, “You look pissed.” I felt I had to make excuses for what I realized was poor emotion management on my part.
Deference is a large portion of emotion work, according to Hochschild. “Ritualized deference is always involved when one is in a subordinate position” (Reskin and Roos 1987:8). Clearly, in the service industry, employees (the majority women) are expected to have been trained in “niceness” from an early age (girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice). So “working as women” (or girls) naturally assumes that “a friendly and courteous manner” will be incorporated into the job. During training at Bazooms, new hires were instructed to “kill them [rude customers] with kindness and class.” In other words, suppress any desire to yell or lecture rude customers, and instead, defer to the old maxim “the customer always is right,” and treat them only with kindness. In this case, emotion work entails being at the service of others to the point of devaluing