ordinary women...

“Working” by Studs Terkel has been called ‘the poetry of real people” by Chicago Daily News. I choose stories of two women, who feel absolutely different about what are they doing for living. One of them is Sharon Atkins, she works as a receptionist and she hates it. The second story is about a waitress, who loves her job-Dolores Dante. I think both of them are a good example of an “emotional labor” that we discussed in class.

Sharon Atkins is a twenty-four years old receptionist working for a big company. Her job is mainly about picking up the phone calls, taking massages and transferring those calls to others. All those things need to be done quickly. The routine of shorting up the conversations became a habit in her personal life. The sound of a ringing phone built a trauma in her, because when she is on a job the phone never stops ringing, so when she comes home she turns the phone off and puts away, so no ring will bother her in her leisure time. She really dislike her job, she even been in the stage where she cried getting up for work. Her depression and fantasies about “land of no-phone” she express in never mailed letters and drawings. The reason why she’s stuck in this job is her undecided idea of what she wants to do for living.

On the other hand Dolores Dante loves her job. She is a single mother of three and works as a waitress for twenty-three years. She loves learning about people. Dolores compares her waitressing job to acting, being on a stage-performing for the customers and watched by the owners. She is a perfectionist in what she is doing and wants to be a waitress as long as she will be able to. Moments of weakness happen once in a while, especially after a night of running a lot under a lot of pressure she feels simply tired and stress out. However when she’s not at work she feels isolated and disconnected.

Both of those women work providing service to satisfy their customers. Their private lifes are affected by what are they doing for work. They bring the emotions home, with the difference that Sharon seems to be a victim of a negative emotional influence, which takes me to the term "emotional labor" created by sociologist Arlie Russel Hochschild ; Sharon also mentions the fact of a “function discrimination” among different professions, and gender discrimination as well, when she says that no men will be hired as a receptionist because they will have to pay him more. So, here we are back to discriminated Wal-Mart female employees.

I work in a service industry, where I need to be friendly and have positive attitude all the time, as a matter of fact this doesn’t work that way. There is always somebody, who makes my shift miserable what affects my work performance and personal life. Most of the time when I finish work I need a little bit of time to “cool down” and bring my blood pressure to normal…

Those texts make me want to find out more about the gender discrimination and emotional labor and as of now I think that’s what my research is going to be about.