Retail Shift Workers: Times and Rhythms of the Emotional Labour. Working Times and Alienation in Postmodern Capitalism: two Qualitative Case Studies

Topics of this research (in progress) are times and rhythms of working in the retail sector, in particular the perceptions and feelings of retail shift workers in Milan and London. The methods used are qualitative methods: interviews, focus groups and ethnographic fieldwork. The information collected will be analyzed to understand the differences and similarities between workers in Italy and UK and their representations of this specific kind of work. As Arlie Russel Hochschild wrote, “jobs of this type have three characteristics in common. First, they require face-to-face or voice-to-voice contact with the public. Second, they require the worker to produce an emotional state in another person-gratitude or fear, for example. Third, they allow the employer, through training and supervision, to exercise a degree of control over the emotional activities of employees” (Hochschild 2003: 147). The goal of this study is to observe the pace of working with customers in this sector, in the socioeconomic context of postfordism and mass consumption in Europe.