Grin and Abhor It: The Truth Behind ‘Service with a Smile’

By Sarah Jaffe

A waitress juggling plates at Big Juds Burgers in Boise forgets to smile–in some restaurants, that could endanger her job. (Kenneth Freeman/Flickr/Creative Commons)

No, that waitress isn’t flirting with you.

Neither is the barista at your local Starbucks, nor the counter server at the Pret A Manger near your office, and you might be surprised to learn that the stripper at your local club doesn’t have a deep fondness for you, either.

Pretending to love one’s work, to be overjoyed by the ability to serve you coffee or pizza or dance for your tips, is an integral part of the job for service workers. “Service with a smile” is expected from anyone who deals with customers, and as Josh Eidelson and Timothy Noah pointed out last week at The Nation and The New Republic respectively, sometimes low-wage service employers require much more.

Eidelson reported on the recent move by Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz to push baristas to write “Come Together” on coffee cups in support of “bipartisan” deficit fear-mongering—to “draft its employees as a delivery system for austerity.” Schultz is a supporter of the “Fix the Debt” campaign started by ultra-rich ideologues that demands spending cuts (especially on social safety net programs) in supposed service of reducing the national debt.

Report Finds Many Domestic Workers Receive Poverty-Level Wages and are Subject to High Levels of Abuse

New York, NY – Today, the National Domestic Workers Alliance released a groundbreaking new report, Home Economics: The Invisible and Unregulated World of Domestic Work, examining the state of domestic work in the US. More than 2,000 nannies, house cleaners, and caregivers were surveyed in 14 cities, drawing for the first time an empirically grounded picture of what it means to be a domestic worker in 21st century America.

“Domestic workers care for our children, they care for our parents, and they care for our homes. Yet, all too often, we fail to recognize their importance to our families and to the economy,” said Ai-jen Poo, Director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance. “These women do the work that makes all other work possible, and they deserve the protections afforded by US law.”