It’s possible to agree with the problem identified by Young and Hochschild without buying their solution. I would rather have service with no smile than service with a fake smile, and I hate being called sir by bellboys who think formality is a substitute for respect. However, I would much rather be served with a sincere smile than none at all.

What most of us are after as customers is a bit of empathy, which is impossible to fake except for hardened conmen. It requires certain cultural knowledge, which can be acquired. But it also requires a basic appreciation of other people as ends in themselves rather than means to an end, and you either have this or you don’t.

In principle, people without empathy should find careers as watch repairers or vulture breeders rather than as waiters or loans officers. In practice, it depends on whether the business depends on regular customers and or recommendations, and on the degree of competition. A cafe in a tourist zone is or an all-night medical centre is likley to be managed by innately uncaring people. But such poeople are less liklely to survive as suburban physiotherapists or mortgage brokers. Competition, information and enlightened recruitment, rather then acting classes, are the answer.

There’s always been an indeterminancy at the heart of the employment contract. as regards workers’ ideas of what they think they are selling and employers’ ideas of what they think they are buying: labour power and physical strength? Obedience and service? Skill and creativity? Personality? A finished product? A central question from the worker’s point of view is: where does the sale stop?

A great post raising that central question of our time - how far the market should go, and how far it already has gone in wheedling its way into our lives and culture.

I’m not sure how far the movement that you cite can go. My feeling is not that far. There will be excesses of course, but I think it’s just so against the grain. People generally appreciate friendly professional service more than ‘caring’ service so I can’t see lots of consumer demand. And there will be plenty of employee push-back and subversion. You can’t really even detect infractions against what you’re after with video surveillance.

On the other hand I think that employers and employees know that employees enjoying in their job enhances their performance - at least in service industries. So Virgin Blue knows that it’s staff seems to be having more fun than Qantas staff - and my guess is that they are (even though Qantas pay and conditions are probably better in some respects.) So everyone’s a winner as Virgin is generally more pleasant than Qantas in my experience - unless you’re paying for business class which I never do.

The thing that I worry more about is the way in which the market distorts culture. Most people would - I think - believe that there was something a bit strange - perhaps wrong - in a piece of fiction (a movie) being the result of market research. But lots of Hollywood movies are just that - with different endings chosen by market research and intent on hitting various market researched cultural themes.

The rush to sell news and views - on TV and in print - has in my opinion gravely distorted political incentives making spin not just so much more possible, but basically obligatory. If you don’t spin your enemies will spin for you and if you try to let the commentators make up their own mind - without trying to make it up for them - they’ll accuse you of naivete and having had a ‘bad week’ (gasp).

I didn’t feel like he really respected me. Sure, he was courteous, but I didn’t feel respected. And I didn’t feel like he was being authentic. I felt like it was an act. I think he respected me until he got the meal. Once he did, I was in the way. We never saw him again. Like I care.