Emotional Labor
The Effects in Today’s Retail
Malinda Thomas
University of Redlands

BUSB301: Critical Analysis
Mr. Ryan Neil
February 2, 2015

Emotional Labor
According to Hochschild, the term emotional labor means the management of feelings to create a publicly observable facial and bodily display; continuing to express that with this emotional labor, therefore sold for a wage and therefore has exchange for value. Hochschild (1983) While preparing this my feelings are close but I would like to add that emotional labor is a burden on an employee. In order to make a living employees sell a portion of their emotional selves to earn a wage. The wage earned by an employee, who earned according to the amount of hours worked, per day, per week, etc. without regard for the employee’s emotional output. In that emotional labor which not accounted for in dollar earnings, an employer is receiving the benefit of an employee’s emotional output without compensating the employee. The way companies are training new hires today, every retail or fast food location you enter the employer stresses the need for emotional labor to be a huge part of the routine. Customer’s enter and the first thing you various malls. The sales force hear is “Welcome to Torrid”, a retail store located in receives training to greet every person entering the store.
Wells Fargo bank customer service employees and tellers although busy with a customer, has been instructed to pause in their service to a customer in order to be welcoming through a statement, “Welcome to Wells Fargo”, a script along with a smile. This personal greeting not only shows emotion from the staff but also gives the customers the feeling that their presence is very important. This value will benefit the company not the employee directly.
Companies want to outperform each other, therefore they need their employees to do an outstanding job when it comes to customer service at whatever cost. It can be associated with doing whatever it takes to gain that customer loyalty. Retain each customer and by doing this employers will exercise the emotional labor to better themselves and some will increase their employee’s wages to make sure they obtain the best from professionals who can deliver and convince customers they are spending in establishments that employs happy and hardworking (physical labor) employees.
Nordstrom, one of the largest companies in the game of high-end retailers, offers personal shoppers for their customers, along with smiles. At the birth of the retail they went as far as if a customer wanted to purchase something not available at this location at the time of purchase, once the merchandise was delivered to the home store of purchase Nordstrom’s would have their employees personally deliver to a customer’s home if requested at no extra cost. This is excellent customer service but is this something the employees normally offer or want to do? Alternatively, is this part of the emotional labor that is incorporated in the training of the said employee? What did this really do for the employee? Yes, this made the employee seem to follow through on the sell but most importantly, it made the value of the customer service for the company sharply increase and again increased the value of the organization.
Therefore, the