No Way To Make A Living is a sociological space about work, generating discussion and exchange on what work, paid or unpaid, is like in today’s world

Stud­ies of home work (Fel­stead and Jew­son, 2000; Nippert-Eng, 1996) focus on the exper­i­ence of doing (paid) work in your own home. They point to how the bound­ar­ies between pub­lic and private are eroded. Some home­work­ers engage in a range of strategies to sep­ar­ate home and work tem­por­ally and spa­tially – through clos­ing the ‘office’ door at 5, by clear­ing away the piece­work com­pon­ents; for oth­ers such demarc­a­tions are not pos­sible or desir­able, for example when home work is com­bined with house work and childcare.

But what do we know about being a cus­tomer or cli­ent of a home­worker? How is the inter­ac­tion influ­enced by this con­fu­sion of bound­ar­ies between home and work?

I have a research pro­ject on men who pay for sex and write about it on the inter­net. These men are sens­it­ive when going to a flat or house (rather than to a brothel) to signs of home. Most want no sign of private life (teddy bears on the bed, for example, or cat orna­ments), but some­times one speaks of lik­ing the feel of being in a home for its implic­a­tion that pros­ti­tu­tion is not a per­form­ance, but a reflec­tion of authen­tic desire, so close to the sex worker that she does it in her own house, not in a ren­ted place. Most import­ant, though is ‘safe, dis­creet and clean’.

And what about other cli­ents and cus­tom­ers? I was stay­ing in a B&B run by a retired couple who paid great atten­tion to delim­it­ing space and also to cir­cum­scribe the ser­vices the cus­tomer is invited to take advant­age of, and – more sig­ni­fic­antly – those which he or she is not.

pho­to­graphy by Lynne Pettinger

The first indic­a­tion of this came as I call to book (tele­phone book­ing; how 20th Cen­tury). I am asked to spe­cify an arrival time. And if I can’t make this time I must let them know. When I ring to tell them the bus is late, the phone call itself is as much of an irrit­a­tion to the land­lord as the earlier threat of late­ness had been. Then there’s the dis­cus­sion about break­fast; I’m invited to state my pref­er­ence, but I am not allowed to coin­cide with other guests, although I do not know this until the landlady’s face twitches and I sense I’ve made an error. Then too there’s the time I want to shower: this, it seems, needs establishing.

Di Domen­ico and Lynch sug­gest that spaces used by guest and host are ambigu­ous, and that guests may feel uncer­tain about their pres­ence and con­scious of bound­ary betrayal (2007: 331), and that this is more marked when the guest house seeks to present an authen­tic exper­i­ence of place and ‘home’ (rather than hotel) (2007: 328).

pho­to­graphy by Lynne Pettinger

So when home is work (and work is a way of life, as it must be when you rent your home and ser­vices out to passing strangers) it is hard to bal­ance the pub­lic and private and to set rules in ways which make sense to cus­tom­ers. It is hard too for the cus­tomer, who expects ser­vice but senses their tres­passing. Like the men who pay for sex, I quite enjoy the lim­ited intim­a­tions of iden­tity – cer­tainly the dec­or­at­ive tray affixed to the wall and the car­pet pat­tern seem revealing.

But for sure “The social niceties and oblig­a­tions inher­ent in the inter­ac­tion per­petu­ate the con­flicts inher­ent in the pro­vi­sion of a com­mer­cial ser­vice within a domestic con­text” (di Domen­ico and Lynch, 2007: 333) and for the first time in my life I have an argu­ment with a landlord.

Ref­er­ences

1. Di Domen­ico, M. and Lynch, P. (2007) ‘Host/Guest Encoun­ters in the Com­mer­cial Home’. Leis­ure Stud­ies, Vol. 26, No. 3, 321–338. DOI: 10.1080/02614360600898110
2. Fel­stead, A. and Jew­son, N. (2000) In work, at home : towards an under­stand­ing of home­work­ing. Lon­don: Routledge
3. Nippert-Eng, C. (1996) Home and work: nego­ti­at­ing bound­ar­ies through every­day life. Chicago, IL: Uni­ver­sity of Chicago Press.