Comment by anon1m0us | Hacker News Reader

Comment by anon1m0us | Hacker News Reader

This article is about a term, "Emotional Labor" being used more broadly than the inventor of the term appreciates. She thinks it waters down the impact of the word.

Her definition of "Emotional Labor" is most succinctly: Work performed with the intention of creating a feeling. Additionally, it's important in such roles that you manage your own feelings: You might need to be nicer or less nice in your role than you're typically comfortable with.

Her examples are social workers, teachers, flight attendants. It might also be a clown who is paid to make kids feel happy at a party even if the clown is really sad that day.

The inventor of the term wants to be clear that there is no gender specificity to it and that it might be a tool used by the feminist movement to classify work mostly done by women as emotional work because women are emotional, but that line of thinking shuts down conversations about emotional work that apply to all parties involved regardless of gender.

My son has behavioral issues for which he has seen therapists in elementary school. I was really surprised just how controlled the LCSWs were in communicating with him, almost to the point of being creepy if I didn't know why they were so similar. It was in stark contrast to how his psychiatrist would speak to him, though not to put down the latter. Really puts it into perspective when thinking of therapists/psychologists being on the emotional laborer side and psychiatrist on medical/chemical side.

LCSW: Licensed Clinical Social Worker

Thanks!

> Work performed with the intention of creating a feeling

So.... the entirety of art?

Creator of the phrase defines it a bit differently:

"Emotional labor, as I introduced the term in The Managed Heart, is the work, for which you’re paid, which centrally involves trying to feel the right feeling for the job. This involves evoking and suppressing feelings. Some jobs require a lot of it, some a little of it."

I think she meant mostly just smiling (with attempted sincerity) at people you don't feel like smiling at or doing the same on the opposite side of the spectrum - being stern to people you have no genuine feelings towards. And this being the significant part of what you are being paid for.

When I first heard the phrase I was thinking it meant spending your emotional capacity on your job. Like something about having a job that causes so much emotions in you that you fell emotionally burned out after finishing your shift.

> Work performed with the intention of creating a feeling.

This sounds like a pretty pointless classification to me. Any work that involves any form of social interaction is going to fall into that category.

No, there's lots of work that involves social interaction, but any feelings created during it are an accidental side-effect and not the intent or primary goal of that work.

A waiter at a fancy restaurant interacts with customers with an intent of creating relevant feelings and the service is a big reason why that job exists (it's not really about delivering stuff from kitchen to the table); while a clerk taking applications at DMV also interacts with customers, but managing their emotions isn't part of their prescribed duties, the job is about processing the applications.

Any form of social interaction involves this kind of ‘labor’. Some jobs more than others, but your distinction is complete nonsense. The DMV is just a poor example, it still involves the same ‘labor’, just arguably less, as the DMV has little incentive to care about their customers. But this relates only to the value the company is trying to provide, not the nature of the work.

> it's not really about delivering stuff from kitchen to the table

Well that explains a lot.

It sounds like a good way to acknowledge the difference between working as a cashier, transacting money for goods and services, and working as a cashier, doing ostensibly the same job, for a company that expects you to maintain a specific friendly up-beat attitude while interacting with customers.

The latter is a different job. It is more work.

How do we talk about the portion of the work which isn't just about transacting money for goods and services, but about making the customer feel good about interacting with you, and thereby feel better about the whole transaction, and be more likely to do so again?

Your example only talks about the portion of the work devoted to this kind of labor. It also presumes that all other variables remain exactly the same, which isn’t likely. A job that places greater emphasis on social interaction would put you under more emotional stress than one that doesn’t. But so would a job where the customers are shitty and pissed off all the time. Even a job where you never talk to customers, and work with only one other person that you only have to talk to once a week is going to involve ‘emotional labor’. How much labor depends entirely on a huge number of factors, perhaps most importantly your own personality.

The only distinctions I’ve seen in this thread are based on ‘how much’ is involved in a role, or (as per the definition in the parent) how that labor is marketed to others. You could talk about one job involving more ‘emotional labor’ than another, but you’d have to think pretty hard to come up with one that didn’t involve any. Even then, you can really only discuss that on an individual basis. There are some kinds of social interactions that leave me emotionally exhausted, but for other people they may not notice any emotional impact at all. Then there are things I never struggle with at all that I know drive others mad with stress.

The distinction made in the parent comment’s definition is even less sound. Your employer will always have expectations around how you interact socially with the people your work brings you in contact with. Whether your employer chooses to market that as a competitive differentiator has absolutely no bearing on how demanding those expectations are to meet.

> only distinctions I’ve seen in this thread are based on ‘how much’ is involved in a role

There is still a real distinction between a job with a lot of emotional labour and a little emotional labour. Isn't that enough to say it isn't a 'pretty pointless classification' ?

> you can really only discuss that on an individual basis

My brother is dyslexic. He works as a civil engineer. Parts of the job involving reading and writing reports are more difficult for him than they would be for me. That doesn't mean it's pointless to acknowledge that reading and writing are part of the workload.

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