Working in the Biz: Material and Identity Processes of Bartending

Bartending makes for an interesting case study in that it brings together research
on emotional labor and tipped front-line service jobs, as well as the contemporary
increase in precarity in work and precarity in life. This project explores the material and
identity processes of bartending, examining how a precarious job with high expectations
of emotional labor in-turn affects the occupational and personal identities of those
employed in the industry. Overall three overarching themes were identified: (1) When
wages are outsourced to customers via tipping systems workers are exposed to
particularly high emotional demands, rendering bartending a unique form of quid pro quo
emotional labor. (2) Bartenders exist in a “default career” mode of employment that is
stigmatized for being low-status low-skilled labor. (3) Performing emotional labor and
managing stigma creates a divergence between bartender’s personal and occupational
identities resulting in constant identity work on and off the job.