An article in the London Review of Books describes in
detail how Pret enforces customer-friendly behavior on the part of its
employees through in-store micromanagement and occasional visits by mystery
shoppers. The overarching idea is to
inculcate an attitude in service workers at odds with their subjective
state.
Of course, all jobs
require us to present a calculated, inauthentic persona to the people we meet;
sociologist Erving Goffman pointed this up in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Even the most technically skilled positions
entail a certain degree of playacting when dealing with others.
However, service
sector work conditions in recent years reflect the worst aspects of neoliberal
capitalism. The widening wealth gap seems
to be heralding the advent of a new Gilded Age in which society consists of a
small plutocratic class and a somewhat larger set of the merely rich on the one
hand, and a large, financially insecure mass of servile contingent workers on the other. Between these two poles is an ever-shrinking demographic
customarily referred to in American cant as the “middle class.” Under such conditions obsequiousness has
become a survival strategy for the masses lest they be made to suffer further.
What does all this mean
for me, then, as a customer who swings by Pret on a business-day afternoon to
grab a quick to-go lunch? Do I want
prompt, efficient service? Of course. Do I wish to be treated rudely or
indifferently? Certainly not. But
neither do I want insincere, overweening friendliness, particularly when I know
that failure to display such behavior might lead to a loss of livelihood.
That there is a
happy medium to be achieved is beside the point. The capitalist class must keep workers firmly
in place. And the surest means of doing
so is to systematically deny each of them their very humanity. Corporations like Pret à Manger are refining
this process to near-science. Whether we
choose to believe so or not, we are all the poorer for the practice.
© 2015 The
Unassuming Scholar
