A Worker-Employer-Customer Triangle: The Case of Tips

Albin, Einat

doi:10.1093/indlaw/dwr004

Cited by 11 publications

(9 citation statements)

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“…Furthermore, some scholars posit that the employment relationship in service work is triangular, involving workers, manager and customers, because customers are directly involved in some aspects of the work relationship, including pay systems — such as tipping — and performance monitoring — for example through mystery shoppers or customer feedback surveys (Albin, ; Bolton and Houlihan, ; Gabriel, ; Leidner, ; Lopez, ). While some researchers highlight the different roles of customers in particular retail and hospitality contexts (Belanger and Edwards, ; Bolton and Houlihan, ), including the lack of power customers have in high‐end establishments where employees may have preferred status through their role as representatives of exclusive brands (Warhurst and Nickson, ), this article focuses on a context in which goods and services are low or averaged price, and where customers have relatively high status and control.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘But It's Your Job To Be Friendly’: Employees Coping With and Contesting Sexual Harassment from Customers in the Service Sector

Good

Cooper

2016

Gender Work & Organization

105

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This article analyses how employees in the service sector respond to sexual harassment from customers and attempts to explain why this is so. There are only a small number of previous studies examining the issue of customer-perpetrated sexual harassment. Those that have been conducted have detailed the nature and prevalence of sexual harassment from customers, but this research lags behind employee experience and some emerging policy responses to this issue. The extant literature, whilst growing, remains largely limited to documenting the phenomenon. In this article, we attempt to create a deeper analysis of customer-perpetrated harassment by conducting a new review of the literature to develop propositions about how employees respond to it and the factors that influence their responses. These propositions are analysed in relation to a qualitative pilot study with 15 interviewees who had experienced sexual harassment from customers to understand how they reacted and why. The article shows how the social norms and precarious working conditions of the service sector constrain employees from seeking formal redress, leading to the enactment of informal coping strategies and temporary contestations of the situation. This research is important for building our understanding of the influence of workplace context for framing employee responses to customer sexual harassment.

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Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘But It's Your Job To Be Friendly’: Employees Coping With and Contesting Sexual Harassment from Customers in the Service Sector

Good

Cooper

2016

Gender Work & Organization

105

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“…In addition, some interviewees expect to be treated disrespectfully by certain customers, because of their relational superiority or 'customer sovereignty' (Korczynski & Ott 2004;Korczynski & Evans 2013), in which customers are encouraged to believe they have elevated social Labour and Industry 311 status and control over service transactions because of their financial power. The importance of customers to the employment relationship in service work accords with Albin's (2011) argument that the employment relationship in this context is triangular, involving workers, managers, and customers, as customers are directly involved in some aspects of the work relationship, such as tipping or performance monitoring, through mystery shoppers or customer feedback surveys. Some interviewees did not complain because they perceived their job to be the one that they would only occupy for a finite time whilst they were studying, rather than as part of their longer-term career.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 88%

Voicing their complaints? The silence of students working in retail and hospitality and sexual harassment from customers

Good

Cooper

2014

Labour & Industry: a journal of the social and economic rel

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This article examines how employees respond to sexual harassment from customers in the workplace. Employing a qualitative method to facilitate a rich understanding, this study uses exploratory interviews with university students working in retail and hospitality in Australia to examine their experiences of customer-perpetrated harassment, the constraints they face in exercising 'employee voice', factors that structure and perpetuate 'employee silence', and the actions that employees take in this situation. Preliminary findings indicate that the employees face difficulty responding to customer-perpetrated sexual harassment due to the constraints of contextual factors, including working conditions, social norms, and the nature of sexual harassment as a workplace problem. While silence is the norm, some employees use informal voice, which has a limited impact because of the power differentials between employees and managers. Other employees use informal coping strategies, which this article coins as 'buffering'. This research is important for understanding the experience of vulnerable employees and for providing insight into potential barriers to eliminate sexual harassment from customers in the workplace.

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“…In the decades that followed, wages, breaks and holidays were regulated by the boards, with the regulations enforced by a variety of means including a dedicated labour inspectorate (Kahn-Freund, 1948). Importantly, minimum wage rates were exclusive of tips (Albin, 2011). Evidence suggests that the wages boards system was relatively successful in creating a floor of universally applicable rights (Bayliss, 1962, p. 119), though, in the postwar context of full employment, wages tended to be rather higher than the legal minima: 'the state of the labour market was a more potent force in determining pay levels' (Commission of Industrial Relations, 1971, p. 22).…”

Section: A Transient Workforcementioning

confidence: 99%

Anything goes? Exploring the limits of employment law in UK hospitality and catering

Ioannou

Dukes

2021

Industrial Relations Journal

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Through a case study of the UK hospitality and catering sector, this article explores the limits of employment law as a means of protecting workers from ill or unfair treatment. Finding microbreaches of the law to be common practice in the sector-akin to industry norms or 'custom and practice'-it considers the routinisation of these microbreaches as an instance of conflict between formal legal rules and social norms. The conflict is problematic because it means that workers are less likely to perceive breach of their legal rights as an injustice worthy of challenge. The industry norms observed have been formed under the influence of an asymmetrical distribution of information and power, including organisational control over the labour process. If

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A Worker-Employer-Customer Triangle: The Case of Tips

Cited by 11 publications

References 0 publications

‘But It's Your Job To Be Friendly’: Employees Coping With and Contesting Sexual Harassment from Customers in the Service Sector

‘But It's Your Job To Be Friendly’: Employees Coping With and Contesting Sexual Harassment from Customers in the Service Sector

Voicing their complaints? The silence of students working in retail and hospitality and sexual harassment from customers

Anything goes? Exploring the limits of employment law in UK hospitality and catering

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