taken with camera phone

To the left, big, bold letters and colours: the store is closing down and everything must go, “step right up, bargains galore”. Thrill at 20% off a new kettle. Take home a pottery owl, only £42.99 (down from £59.00). It’s an exciting chance, you consumer monkey. Be seduced by these prices.

taken with camera phone

The second is a different appearance of emotion in capitalism; this is not the capitalism of the romanticised commodity exchange discussed above (Illouz, 1997), nor quite the cold intimacy of managed emotion in capitalism (Illouz, 2007). It’s the organisation appealing to sentiment, to empathy, to feeling and not sensation. Fevre (2000) suggests this is rare, arguing that the triumph of ‘common sense’ as a form of reasoning means that rationality is imposed in places where it ought not be. That is, an organisation might easily fail to make the case for care, seeing the job losses that result from the store closing as merely the inevitable outcome of recession: there’s no use crying over spilled economic inevitabilities. After all, it’s common sense that unemployment rises in recession, but never mind, there’ll be a recovery eventually. Certainly, it seems that some of the customers have to be reminded to see past this, to connect the bargain to the pain. I can’t help thinking that there’s a few people making decisions about cutting the budget deficit who could do with a copy of this sign in their office.

References

1. Fevre, R. W. (2000) The Demoralization of Western Culture . Continuum, London.
2. Illouz, E. (1997) Consuming the Romantic Utopia: Love and the Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism . Berkeley: University of California Press.
3. Illouz, E. (2007) Cold Intimacies: The Making of Emotional Capitalism. Polity Press, London.

Alan Sillitoe[i], who died today, makes the case for Nottingham being psychogeographically northern better than anyone else. The world of Arthur Seaton in Saturday Night and Sunday morning already discussed on the site, is what my friends’ granddads had when they were back from the war: they were skilled on the production line, got a good pay packet and tipped it up to their mothers, and then to the wife, getting 5 shillings back for fags and booze.

In ‘Mr Raynor the school teacher’, one of the short stories that are part of ‘the Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner’ collection[ii], there are hints as to the changing relations of power in post-war Nottingham: the incipient decline in authority and the rise in women’s employment concomitant with increasing sexualisation in the public sphere. Mr Raynor’s class don’t mind how his attention drifts from teaching, they’re not committed to school. Mr Raynor is one of the few almost-sympathetic authority figures in Sillitoe’s early work; sympathetic because he isn’t quite in control (as the student Bullivant, with his “Teddy boy ideas” susses out). It’s an open secret that Mr Raynor likes to watch the girls working at the department store across the road from his school. The shopgirls come and go; work for them just fills in a space between leaving school and getting married (or getting pregnant). He has his favourites amongst them and the story focuses on his memory of the best:

As she walked she had carried her whole body in a sublime movement conducive to the attraction of every part of it, so that he was even aware of heels inside her shoes and finger-tips buried perhaps beneath a bolt of opulent cloth.

Sillitoe, 2007: 69

The shop worker here is as much the object of consumption as the bolts of cloth and the suits she sells. As the class misbehaves and distracts him, Mr Raynor tries hard to hold onto the image of the nameless girl, who is both the cause of his distraction and the thing that keeps him going through the daily grind. The voyeuristic gaze isn’t enough, though by the time the (married) Mr Raynor has plucked up the courage to talk to his favourite, she’s stepping out with a young man and he’s missed his chance. And then, this emancipated, sexy young woman, earning her living at the coalface of the new consumer society, becomes a woman punished: she’s killed by her young man. Mr Raynor mourns her, but his life continues its cycle of keeping just enough control of the classroom to leave time for more daydreaming.

References

1. Maconie, S. (2007) Pies and Prejudice: In Search of the North. Ebury Press.
2. Peace, D. (2005) GB84. Faber and Faber.
3. Sillitoe, A. (2007 [1959]) The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. Harper Perennial.

I went into a cafe the other day and asked for a table for 1. The waiter looked at me.
“you’re on your own!?” he said, reaching out and, well, hugging me. So much for the cold intimacies of emotional capitalism (Illouz, 2007), this was warm sympathy. I would have been happier to go unremarked, though.

2. Cashless

I had to buy my train ticket at my destination. The ticket office had been closed, the machine was broken. The National Express man told me off.

I got my debit card out to pay, changing my mind ‘oh, I think I have cash’. The ticket seller said, no pay by card, ‘it saves me cashing up’.

Lazy, I think. But perhaps he’s not confident at maths. Or maybe he’s got too much else to do at the end of the shift, and he might not be paid for the time it takes. I like to speculate. These small encounters reveal the negotiations and contingency of customer service work.

3. Regulars

Kay, in the Blues Café knows I want black coffee to take away, she remembers my choice after just 3 visits. She says ‘People never change their morning coffee orders’.

I worked at ‘The Fox’ in 1996–7. Every Sunday morning, the ‘sherry and a cherry’ woman came in: Harvey’s Bristol Cream, in a schooner, two glace cherries on a cocktail stick; a pint of Landlord for her husband. Funnier at least than saturday night man, boring us at the bar for hours: he reckoned 2 pints and a bottle of lager and he was still under the drink-drive limit.

Liz remembers the woman who she served mango sorbet with Revels[i] and a black coffee to, at 11am every morning she worked at George and Davis icecream shop in the mid-90s.

Customer’s routines become part of customer service worker’s routines, and we remember these fragments of our working lives.

I was staying in a B&B last night and found myself having breakfast this morning with a Hotel Inspector. He didn’t quite have the style of Alex Polizzi, pictured above (of the current Channel Five Hotel Inspector series) but it was still the most interesting early morning conversation I’ve had this week. I’m not sure which of the various organisations that bestow stars he works for but it probably doesn’t make much difference. So, during an especially well-presented breakfast, I asked: What exactly does a real life hotel inspector do?

To start with, he explained that he spends most of the week away from home. The glamour of his working life is already diminished in my mind. Some establishments, those with lower ratings, can be checked out in the space of a day-visit, he tells me, whereas others, hotels or B&Bs with high ratings, require an overnight stay. ‘There are a lot of services to sample in some places’, he comments — and lots of hidden spaces to investigate, it turns out. One visit last week led to the deregistering of an establishment after he moved the bed away from the wall and exposed ‘an inch of dust’. The appeal of his work has now completely gone for me. So I’m surprised to learn from the How to become a AAA hotel inspector webpage , that it ‘is a much sought-after job, with a limited number of openings’.

Maybe it’s to do with all the free dinners. I wonder though how it feels to eat in order to evaluate. Do you have to choose things you might not otherwise want? He is obliged to order room service, try out restaurants, and sit in bars. Not for the leisure we would normally associate with consumption in these places but to scrutinize the menu, and the manner and mood of waiting staff. His own experience in catering, from waiter to chef, goes a long way in helping him to judge what’s on his plate, and how it’s brought to him. Yet his current job has taken him to the other side of the bar or table. This places him in the curious position of knowing the trades he is assessing whilst having to act like a consumer in doing so.

Even when he retires to his room, puts on his pyjamas, and gets into bed after what might have been a long, hard day, his work is far from over. Is the mattress firm? Is it even across the bed? Do the springs squeak if he moves around a lot? Can you hear the people in the room next door? Restful, it isn’t.

As I finish my coffee, I ask him what he does for a holiday. I don’t suppose you want to stay in a fancy hotel? I say. ‘Not really’, he replies ‘I quite like self-catering.’

What’s notable about the reporting of the dispute is who is imagined to be damaged by strike action: it is you, my reader and telly watcher, you the imagined, eternal and all-important consumer. You are no longer a shadowy presence; you have had your honeymoon plans destroyed. Whilst the workforce are specified by the fact of their employment for BA, you the consumer are everyman, and you the consumer ought not be disadvantaged by those pesky strikers. There is no hint that you are also a worker.

Casablanca Airport by John Spooner

The BA dispute — and the political interventions provoked by it — has broader implications for discussions of pay and working conditions than just this case. It influences the landscape in which further discussions and decisions about labour law and labour rights are made, and relates to political sensitivity to the consumer the worker, to the power of management and the privileged status afforded to protecting the brand. The consumer is not the only universal figure in our social life. We are workers, too.

References

1. Hochschild, A. (1983) The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. London: University of California Press.
2. Taylor, S. And Tyler, M. (2000) ‘Emotional labour and sexual difference in the airline industry’. Work, Employment and Society. 14:77–95.
3. Williams C. (2003) ‘Sky service: the demands of emotional labour in the airline industry’. Gender, Work and Organization. 10 (5) 513–550.

John Spooner photographs used under creative commons license

‘Christy, Southwest Airlines’ — Brian Finke

References
Shilling, C. (1993) The Body and Social Theory, London: Sage.
Witz, A, C Warhurst, D Nickson (2003) ‘The labour of aesthetics and the aesthetics of organization’ Organization, 10(1): 33–54.
Wolkowitz, C. (2002) ‘The social relations of body work’, Work, Employment and Society 16(3): 497–510.

I have done some writing on the subject of ‘aesthetic labour’, the work of producing and presenting an acceptable working body, seen very clearly in Dawn’s post. In clothing retail in the UK, the cost of work clothing is usually borne by the employee and often has to come from current stock. Although employees may get a discount, the need to stay in fashion can be a burden to a worker on low wages; conceptually we can read this as showing how workers are implicated in consumption work as well as the labour market (Pettinger, 2008). Organisations’ demands for aesthetic labour reflects their presumptions about the importance of protecting and enhancing their ‘specific’ brand values (Pettinger, 2004), and marks a similarity between the postal worker and the sales assistant: both are configured as the embodiment of the corporation.

These postal workers will now be getting 5 euros a week for keeping themselves tidy; retail sales assistants are unlikely to start a similar campaign, tending instead celebrate the chance to “live it, love it, be the brand”, by buying themselves a nice new frock.

References

1. Pettinger, L. (2008) ‘Developing aesthetic labour: the importance of consumption’. International Journal of Work, Organisation and Emotions. 2 (4): 324–343.

2. Pettinger, L. (2004) ‘Branded stores, branded workers: service work and aesthetic labour in fashion retail.’ Consumption, Markets and Culture 7(2): 165–84.

Roger Barton

He said to call him the day before to confirm. ‘What time should I arrive?’ ‘Between 2 and 2.30.’ He means in the morning. I try to sleep at 9pm and set the alarm for just after 1am. With three layers of clothes, I arrive at the security barrier an hour later. ‘I’m going to work with Roger Barton,’ I say to the guard and we both laugh. I walk up the steps from the car park with the view of Canary Wharf behind – a very different kind of market. I go over to the stand. ‘Ali, give Dawn her coat,’ Roger says within a breath of hello. He turns to the others: ‘Tell her what we’re doing, show her, make her work!’

The so-called ‘new’ Billingsgate market (the site since 1982) is a covered hall with adjacent buildings for additional cold storage, as well as a shellfish boiling room and an ice-making plant! (see: www.billingsgate-market.org.uk.) There are 54 merchants in all, selling from stands organised along three back-to-back rows lengthways with several cross-cutting paths at intervals along them, and from shops around the edges of the hall. There’s nothing but fish and seafood on sale, broadly divided into so-called ‘fresh’ or ‘wet’, exotic, frozen, plus smoked and different kinds of seafood. The floor of the market hall is green and gleaming with water that reflects everything around. There is a whole network of pipes overhead which bring water hoses to the stands. There’s a phone at each stand and plenty of mobiles. In fact, there’s a lot of talking to the world outside. And there’s a lot of moving about. Porters are everywhere, each with their number, either working directly for a stand-holder or ‘freelance’, getting work according to the demands of the day. On the first-floor there are the merchants’ offices, some directly overlooking the market, plus the Clerk and Superintendent’s office, the Fish Merchants Association, inspectors, maintenance, police and first aid, as well as the Seafood Training School which offers courses in fish cookery.

The first thing that’s striking as you enter the market site is the smell, not bad, just there. Even the freshest fish in such quantities smells of something. It’s as if there’s an odour from all the wetness and cold too. At this time, the place is relatively empty, although the two cafes are already doing a good business. Roger tends to set up early, and it can take a small team of people a couple of hours. By the time I’ve moved a few boxes of prawns and look up, there’s already more going on. The activity creeps up on you with cries of ‘mind your legs’, ‘… your legs!’ and the rumble of trolleys. It’s the porters’ space and it’s up to you to get out of the way. I’ve no idea what time it is most of the time I am there. At one point it is still only 4am, at another it is suddenly 7.30.

Everyone works very fast. I know this because I am trying to keep up with them and it’s a struggle. There are a lot of boxes of prawns, at least 7 sizes, all 2 kilos. Some have different coloured labels, sometimes the labels are the same colours but the size is different. You have to read them then put them in the right pile. I find it hard to see where the size is written and keep getting it wrong.

‘Give Mike a hand with the congers,’ Roger says. Yeah, right. 30 kilos a box. I can’t shift them an inch. So someone tells me to lay out the snappers. I start by trying to pick up a 3 kilo fish. By the tail with a hand around its slippery body. ‘Pick the fish up through the eyes,’ I get told. I hesitate for a moment but once I get beyond the idea of it, it’s actually quite easy. You can get a firm grasp though the sockets, the bones are hard there and can take the weight. But only two fish in, I put my bare hand – ‘did you bring gloves?’ Roger had asked like I was supposed to know – into the ice and catch my thumb on the razor sharp gills of the snapper. My coat is no longer white and pristine.

By the time I come back from finding a plaster, the snapper are all laid out and I’m directed to help Jo with the prawns. ‘You need a knife and a marker for this job,’ says Roger. The marker is like a chunky black Pritt stick and the knives are varied. I use the one with the smallest blade and try to imitate the others by making a cross in the plastic packaging which I then tear away. I feel moderately helpful doing this. Then Roger says to take away the rubbish, next to the cold storage area outside. It’s piled on one of the pallets with a hand-held steering device underneath. It’s simple if you know how. I don’t so just pick up an armful of rubbish. ‘Leave it to me,’ someone says immediately. I feel useless again.

There are two clear sections to the stand. One end is run by Billy, Roger’s right-hand man. This is where most of the large fish are – halibut, grouper (brown and spotted), all sorts of snapper, tilapia, red bream, conger eels and salmon. Plus some fish from the Indian Ocean, pomfret and other things I’m not familiar with, such as doctor fish and rabbit fish. At the other end, which faces one of the exits, there’s a big selection of other smaller fish and seafood. That’s where the squid are, and smaller farmed sea bass (10 for £12), plus sardines and all sorts of other things. The effect is of abundance. Between the two is the section with the prawns, then there’s another stretch before Roger’s ‘office’ (a space to write orders underneath the phone) and the ‘till’ (a drawer!). This is my patch for the day.

Everyone sells actively. ‘I want to hear you selling,’ Roger says, ‘not waiting for people to ask you things. So, what’s your pitch?’ Now I’m comfortable, I can do this. There’s a lot of cod, £3 per kilo. ‘I want to see all that gone,’ he says. Then there’s wild sea bass, £12 but I can go down to £10, I’m told. Next to that are chunks of tuna, £12, swordfish, £10, and marlin, £9, all vacuum-packed in clear plastic. In front, there are lobsters, £16. On the side, there’s a pile of razor clams, £5, and along the top, clams, £18 for a 2 kilo box, scallops (out of the shell, £18 for a 1 kilo tub, £29 for a 2 kilo one), dover sole (small, £7, and medium, £12), and packets of crabmeat, £2, and smoked salmon, £5 – but £25 in Harrods as Roger is fond of saying. I write out the prices either on the back of one of the boxes, or on a polystyrene lid as a reminder.

When the customers come, I talk about the eyes and where everything’s caught. I spot the middle-class people and tell them that the sea bass is wild, what a treat it is. I aim the cod at the Londoners, emphasise how it’s a bargain. The quantities are not small. I talk about how you can feed a lot of people with this fish, and realise that I’m saying that more to the tired-looking white middle-aged women and young and middle-aged black women. I emphasise sociality and play on their roles of being a host or provider. None of this is planned, this is what comes out, what I find myself doing when I’m not thinking about it. Of course it’s young and not so young men who want to flirt. Three people say they want to buy me. Yeah right, I reply flatly.

Lots of people seem to buy second time around, after checking out other fish and prices at other stands. A French couple buy the largest Turbot on the stall for £50. Then they come back for 2 kilos of scallops, £29. They know what they want, and don’t treat me as if I might be a source of knowledge. Others do, however. ‘What do you do with those [razor clams]?’ ‘How do you cook a sea bass?’ Now I am really in my element![1] I offer recipes and wise-sounding guidelines: ‘With fish,’ I pronounce, ‘the principle is always not to do too much’, and so on. I am getting into my stride and thoroughly enjoying myself. One man remarks, ‘You’re in the wrong line of work, you should be a TV chef!’ I’ve been laughing at that ever since.

When I think back on the day, I have a strong image of myself swinging a cod! I’m really getting the hang of it after a while and start to be able to feel the weight. ‘This one’s heavy, more than 2 kilos,’ I say to a customer. ‘Yeah, 2.4,’ Roger states after no more than a glance at the fish I’m throwing on the scales. He knows so well through sight and hold over the years he can now bypass the weighing altogether. He’s always right.

I get faster at mental arithmetic quite quickly. The first time something weighs 3.2 kilos I can’t calculate the 0.2. I’m embarrassed by this but own up and Roger gives me a calculator. Then I get the hang of how they round up and down and I more confidently let myself know the price, taking a few moments to check it in my head – or with the calculator if someone is buying several items – while I’m weighing the fish. No one challenges me. In fact, more generally, people treat me like a fishmonger assuming that’s what I do, seeing the role ahead of the person. I’m quite chuffed that I can carry this off, at least to the general public. I’m not selling to other fishmongers, Roger deals with them.

Roger tells me to tidy up at some point as gaps start to appear in the display. ‘Presentation is everything,’ he proclaims after getting out more tuna and swordfish, ‘line those up,’ he says. I do so then repeat the process with the cod and even reach under the stand to rearrange the sea bass. Water drips down my neck. I must smell of fish all through by now. By the end of my shift, the front of my coat and legs are soaked.

It’s gone quiet without me seeing it coming and I’m sorry it’s nearly over. Some of the stands are back to their bare metal frames as some merchants leave as soon as the market officially shuts at 8am. In other places there are large amounts of rubbish and people hosing things down. I’m tired now and a bit frazzled. Roger asks me to count up the money in his drawer, a pile of assorted notes and handfuls of change. At around 9am he says I’ve done enough. ‘So, what are you going to give me for dinner?’ I say. That was the deal. ‘Whatever you want,’ he replies and sounds as if he means it. I end up with 2 large cuttlefish, 4 dover sole, and a kilo of scallops. This feels like a good exchange. I drive home very happy. And grateful that I don’t have to do this every day.

Your first appointment is at nine o’clock. (This leisurely start gives you a chance to answer emails and telephone messages from the previous evening.) As you enter the hall of an elegant townhouse, the smell of fresh coffee greets you. The good news doesn’t end there. The client has just bought a fifteen year-old Yamaha upright piano: a fine instrument in good condition. You have been highly recommended by their piano teacher so you do not have to prove yourself. Clients who have not owned instruments before will stand around the piano and watch you work. They will ask how you became a piano tuner, when pianos were invented, and how they work. This is a great opportunity to show off and a wonderful antidote to the highly skilled but somewhat lonely tuning process. So, allow plenty of time.

Next stop: a converted barn a few miles out of town. You have to walk past a four-wheel drive BMW and a top of the range Mercedes to reach the door. As before, a new client, but this piano that has been bought on Ebay for fifty pounds. On first inspection you reel off a well-rehearsed list of conditions and provisos: ‘When we spoke price on the phone you didn’t say there were six broken hammer shanks. Do you realise that if I repair these, the others (clearly in a fragile state) will probably break too? Because it is so far out of tune it may take a couple of sessions to get it up to pitch,’ and so on. The status of the piano tuner swiftly goes from one that is up with the GP or family accountant, right down to general dogsbody who earns money for old rope, and whose visit is an unwelcome irritation that has to be slotted in between getting children to riding lessons and shopping at Waitrose.

Because you did so much extra work on the Ebay piano, you eat your lunch as you drive to the local jazz venue. The band want the Steinway tuned before they rehearse in the afternoon — and for you to call back before the gig in the evening to check and tidy. You work in the half light as roadies clatter about with mike-stands and ladders, but you’ve tuned it a thousand times before and it is second nature, almost.

In the afternoon you visit an old client, a retired GP for whom you tune twice a year, as regular as clockwork. He is particular, and wants to discuss any tiny problem with the piano. But when you finally iron out any niggles, he is extremely appreciative and you leave feeling highly valued. Many tunings are on pianos for children learning, but amongst adult musicians, Doctors, University lecturers and school teachers seem to rank high in number.

You head home to telephone messages and emails. Piano tuners do not earn enough to employ secretaries and the administrative side of business stretches into the evening — an intrusion that has been eased to an extent by the mobile phone and computer. Usually, your working day ends here as you settle in for dinner with the family. But don’t forget, you must return to check the Steinway for the jazz.

The stage is cramped and you have to untangle the vocal mike-lead and the stage-light from the music desk before you can check the tuning. It has barely shifted. They could have managed without the extra visit, but you can always make some improvement. You spend ten minutes on the top octave. Money for old rope, you wonder? No, money for peace of mind; peace of mind for the pianist who can feel confident that the piano will not reflect badly on her playing. And for you, knowing that if the pianist is happy, you will be asked again.