{"id":54699,"date":"2013-04-16T12:00:11","date_gmt":"2013-04-16T17:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=54699"},"modified":"2013-10-31T04:19:36","modified_gmt":"2013-10-31T09:19:36","slug":"when-classes-collide-workers-and-guests-at-high-end-hotels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2013\/04\/16\/when-classes-collide-workers-and-guests-at-high-end-hotels\/","title":{"rendered":"When Classes Collide: Workers and Guests at High End Hotels"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at BlogHer<\/a>\u00a0and The Huffington Post<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

This PostSecret confession<\/a> breaks my heart:<\/p>\n

\"1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Most hospitality workers — especially those at high end hotels — routinely interact with people with significantly more economic resources than they. \u00a0This is an interesting point of contact analyzed exquisitely by Rachel Sherman in her book, Class Acts: Service and Inequality in Luxury Hotels<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>(review\u00a0here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Sherman observes that workers and guests often minimized the class differences between them, even as enacting relationships strongly\u00a0structured\u00a0by their relative privilege. \u00a0Instead of obsessing about the wealth and privilege of the guests or ranting about the injustice of class inequality, though, they “normalized” it such that it was mostly invisible:<\/p>\n

Unequal entitlements and responsibilities were not obscured, because they were perfectly obvious and well-known to interactive workers. Nor were they explicitly legitimated, since workers rarely talked about them as such. Rather, they simply became a feature of the everyday landscape of the hotel. Conflicts over unequal entitlement were couched in individual rather than collective terms and in the language of complaint rather than critique (p. 17).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Interestingly, this confession bucks the trend, which makes me wonder: if normalizing becomes habitual, what upsets it? \u00a0What knocks class consciousness back into full view? \u00a0In this case, it might have been the personal nature of the question. \u00a0When the guest expresses worry about the safety of the worker’s own neighborhood, questioning whether “someone like her” should go “somewhere like that,” perhaps it is to direct of a contrast to ignore.<\/p>\n

Also inspired by Class Acts<\/em>, see Employee “Empowerment” and Corporate Culture<\/a>.<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at BlogHer\u00a0and The Huffington Post. This PostSecret confession breaks my heart: Most hospitality workers — especially those at high end hotels — routinely interact with people with significantly more economic resources than they. \u00a0This is an interesting point of contact analyzed exquisitely by Rachel Sherman in her book, Class Acts: Service and Inequality in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[29,10514,307,76],"class_list":["post-54699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-class","tag-leisure","tag-traveltourism","tag-work"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54699"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54699\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58030,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54699\/revisions\/58030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}