Apparently, Pret à Manger enforces
cheerfulness among its employees by sending a mystery shopper to each outlet
once a week. If the anonymous visitor is
greeted with sufficient obsequiousness, every worker at the store gets a cash
bonus.
How nice.
Because, after all, I know I want to be treated slavishly whenever I
stop in someplace for a cup of coffee. A
fleeting encounter in the bustle of the day with someone I’ll likely never meet
again, an exchange forgotten by me almost as soon as it ended, becomes an
elaborate three-minute playlet of manners in which the other person’s
livelihood depends upon how well he or she projects friendliness.
“Pret” arrived in the States a while back, I’m
told, but it has yet to open any stores on the West Coast where I live. But the chain’s effort to extract the last
drop of cheerfulness from its low-wage workforce, described in The New Republic by Timothy Noah, demonstrates
late capitalism’s quest to not simply claim their employees’ physical and
mental labor but to take hold of their inner lives as well. (It comes as little surprise that McDonald’s--home of the original McJob--owns an equity share in Pret.)
I like courteous service as much as anyone. I enjoy dealing with friendly people, provided
the friendliness comes from the heart. But
even as civility erodes to nothing, it appears that its last remnants
survive within the plastic confines of the food service industry. Still, I'm not sure if the Pret model is universally appealing. It certainly isn't for me. I’m
more partial to the efficient, even detached, service at the old school joints
I haunt when I’m in the city. Places
where the waitstaff are clad in white jackets, the lighting is low, and the paneling
dark. Aside from the occasional night
out, however, I prefer to dine at home.
But Pret’s customer service policy is a manifestation
of a broader trend in the service industries in which so many of us now toil and
a dark harbinger of things to come. No
telling how this affects the worker internally.
Kids sick? Not feeling well
yourself? Bills past due? Car trouble?
Fight with your spouse? Your dog
died? Tough luck; you’ll just have to smile
and accept your lot as a member of the servant class.
The work I do has its own
emotional labor demands. But I can’t
imagine having continually to contort my affect so as to best please each
individual I come in contact with.
Timothy Noah is undoubtedly correct when he
observes that this push toward agreeableness favors women over men given the lifelong
cultural pressure on the former to be pleasing to others. My ex-wife, the product of a
culture where emotional reserve is considered a virtue, loves to mock American
women’s exaggerated emotiveness. (“H-i-i-i-i-i! How are
y-o-u-u-u-u! It’s so good to s-e-e-e you!” Always makes me laugh.) Such
displays can hardly be sincere, even among friends.
However, sincereity isn’t really the point, then,
is it? Good management practice nowadays
dictates exerting as much control over the workers’ lives as can be legally
managed. There’s an element of dominance
and submission creeping into the workplace that was unimaginable a generation
ago. And why not? After all, self-actualization in
our society is fully achieved only when one is in a position to exploit others.
And so the Pret à Manger story is simply another
installment of a long-running drama in our economic race to the bottom. Its main plot thread is trivialization of the
individual. The truest expression of
depersonalization is when we are asked to alienate not only our time and
skill, but our inner selves in the bargain.
The day will soon be upon us, I’m afraid, when we can no longer dare
call our souls our own.
No comments:
Post a Comment