In The New Republic, Timothy Noah looks at “emotional labor,” which in practice means work environments where employees are required to exude happiness to give customers a positive experience. Here’s Noah on sandwich chain Pret A Manger:

Pret keeps its sales clerks in a state of enforced rapture through policies vaguely reminiscent of the old East German Stasi. A “mystery shopper” visits every Pret outlet once a week. If the employee who rings up the sale is appropriately ebullient, then everyone in the shop gets a bonus. If not, nobody does. This system turns peers into enthusiasm cops, further constricting any space for a reserved and private self. And these cops require literal stroking. In other workplaces, touching a co-worker may get you fired, but at Pret you have to worry about not touching co-workers enough. “The first thing I look at,” Chief Executive Clive Schlee told The Telegraph last March, “is whether staff are touching each other . . . I can almost predict sales on body language alone.”

I’m a generally positive, happy person, but working somewhere that not only asks you to look happy but touch each other, is just too much.

Photo: Zorilla

Customer service! When it’s good it’s good, when it’s fine it’s good, and when it’s bad it can ruin your whole experience—BUT ONLY SOMETIMES.

EXAMPLE ONE – OKAY
I got breakfast on Saturday at a place that had pretty shitty service, but it was FINE because the dude was super busy and he was obviously doing the best he could. He also had a great smile and made some little jokes when he did finally circle around. ALLOWED. Would go again, sure.

EXAMPLE TWO – NOT OKAY
Yesterday I got a bloody mary and some fries at bar in a hotel in Brooklyn with five thousand employees, five patrons (at that early hour), and shitty service. BUT, the shitty service did not come with a smile, instead it came with terrible energy because everyone was ACTIVELY, LAUGHABLY RUDE AND MISERABLE. It was like someone had given them all direction to act as terrible as possible. I still had fun because friends and also triumph of the human spirit. But that place sucks so hard that I won’t go back even if someone else is paying (big), and EVEN MORE TELLING, I was ALMOST tempted to write a Yelp review.

SO, IN CONCLUSION: You can be terrible at your job and get away with almost anything if you’re nice.

P.S. I didn’t pay for either of these outings because of a combination of generous friends (<3 you, generous friends) and the take turns rule (you get this round, I’ll get the next). But if I had paid, I would have tipped 20% at both places, because wages are set with that expectation and it’s the right thing to do. But I wouldn’t have overtipped NOPE.