Loving your Third Place - Sharing the Emotional Labor

Our home, however we define that, is our first place, our work is our second place, and we have a third place that is representative of our community and social life. Sociologist Ray Oldenburg, who is believed to have coined the term, argues that third places are important for civil society, democracy, civic engagement, and establishing feelings of a sense of place. Your third places may include church, a community center, a park, or a gym. For many of us, our third spaces are coffee houses, bars, and restaurants. During the pandemic, these third places closed - some for days or weeks, others for months...some reopened but were different, and others were lost due to reasons ranging from financial feasibility to staffing shortages to the passing away of the owners.

It is important for all of us to remember that while that cafe may be our preferred third place for socializing and hanging out, it is also the second place, the workplace, for its employees. That seems like an obvious statement, but after working in a restaurant before, during, and after the pandemic, what we know doesn't always result in how we act. When it comes to loving and being loved by our third place, we need to understand the concept of emotional labor.

Emotional labor is an impression management technique in which workers manage their feelings in order to present the expected (required) bodily and facial displays to the public, and it is done in order to meet expectations and for compensation. Within the service industry, emotional labor includes holding back frustration and anger when you are treated poorly, projecting a positive and warm affect regardless of outside influences ranging from an uncomfortable climate caused by a faulty air conditioner to deep grief caused by the death of a loved one. Being forced to display emotions that are not felt or that contradict reality for the purpose of increasing your potential for tips can lead to dissonance that results in cynicism, burnout, illness, low self-esteem, and ultimately job turnover According to the National Restaurant Association, the turnover rate in fast-casual restaurants is between 130-150% annually, and between 50-150% for restaurants across the board.

Emotional labor also takes a toll on customers - as they can begin to believe that the pleasant service environment they encounter is disingenuous, which can then result in an increase potential for contentious interactions. I'm not going to get into the tipping debate here (that's a whole other blog...and maybe a book) or about the masking debates, but I am going to talk about love. We can choose to show love with our actions and our words. We, as employees and customers, can choose to be authentic - and to accept and respect authenticity in each other.

Recently an incident was all over social media in which a pregnant mom was made to clean up after her toddler on an airplane. Yes, I am leaving out a lot of details that are easily accessible - don't believe me - go and Google "airplane popcorn issue" and you will find over 14 million results. I'm leaving them out because my point is not the facts, but the lack of respect shown by nearly everyone involved, and everybody who commented on the incident. There's a line in the Sondheim musical Into the Woods in which the Witch points out that the only thing everyone seems to care about is finding someone to blame.

The truth is, the customer is not always right. Neither is the employee. In nearly all disagreements and dissension there is fault on every side because there are emotions and beliefs involved along with the facts and figures. We need to start assuming positive intent and stop assigning blame.

Parker Palmer states that human beings are the greatest thing in any organization. He goes on to say that, for many, work has become the equivalent of a battlefield where their identity and integrity are treated with violence in order for an organization to reach a goal. I challenge you to really think about your third place - and more specifically think about those who work there. Those who serve you coffee, food, or beer, those who clean the tables and toilets, those who stock the shelves so you can stock your pantry, and remember that there are no undignified jobs. We fail as community members when we failure to find the other worthy of respect. Show up with love, because the world needs as much love as it can get!

Want a little more information?

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2016/09/14/third-places-as-community-builders/

Palmer, P. J. (2017). The courage to teach: Exploring the inner landscape of a teacher’s life (20th Anniversary Edition. Wiley.