Author Type

Graduate Student

Date of Award

2017

Document Type

Thesis

Publication Status

Version of Record

Submission Date

October 2026

Thesis/Dissertation Advisor [Chair]

Hough, Phillip A.

Abstract

Bartending makes for an interesting case study in that it brings together research on emotional labor and tipped front-line service jobs, as well as the contemporary increase in precarity in work and precarity in life. This project explores the material and identity processes of bartending, examining how a precarious job with high expectations of emotional labor in-turn affects the occupational and personal identities of those employed in the industry. Overall three overarching themes were identified: (1) When wages are outsourced to customers via tipping systems workers are exposed to particularly high emotional demands, rendering bartending a unique form of quid pro quo emotional labor. (2) Bartenders exist in a “default career” mode of employment that is stigmatized for being low-status low-skilled labor. (3) Performing emotional labor and managing stigma creates a divergence between bartender’s personal and occupational identities resulting in constant identity work on and off the job.

Extent

78 p.

Comments

Includes bibliography.|Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2017.|FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection|Includes bibliography.

Identifier

FA00004876

Format

pdf

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