Family and relationships
Arlie Hochschild
Work nobody counts
Arlie Hochschild (1983 · UC Berkeley) — Work nobody counts.
What actually happened?
Doing fieldwork with Delta flight attendants she kept meeting one phrase in the training material: a sincere smile. The airline was not satisfied with courtesy. It required the smile to be real — which means the employee has to manufacture the feeling internally, and that part of the job has no hours, no pay and no name. She put it beside physical labour: lifting boxes tires you, and so does producing cheerfulness, except the second bill arrives late and usually gets recorded as 'she's changed'.
Work off the timesheet is paid for by whoever does it
Anything unmeasured gets treated as done in passing. It doesn't disappear for going unrecorded; it becomes one person's invisible load, and that person often has no language to complain in, because on paper nothing happened.
Surface acting and deep acting bill differently
Putting the face on while knowing you are exhausts through tension. Persuading yourself you mean it exhausts because afterwards you can't find yourself. Both have a cost; they arrive at different times.
Care time is rigid
You can write a document faster. You cannot feed a child faster or sit with a sick parent faster. So 'efficiency' barely applies — the work can only be taken over by someone else, or not done, and then someone else pays.
How do I use it today?
When the work at home lands on one person and saying so hasn't changed it, don't start with fairness. Log two weeks: every task, who did it, how long. Most negotiations fail because the two people are looking at different lists. At work, if you got little done and can't face speaking, ask how much of the day went on holding a required feeling — and whether any of that was counted.
Deep read
Read alongside
Further
Lines to keep
That smile is not 'her' smile.
The first shift is at work, the second at home. Only one pays.
Labour nobody books gets billed to one person anyway.