Grin And Abhor It The Truth Behind Service With A Smile Summary

“You’d look so much prettier if you smiled,” a statement that can send chills up any woman’s spine, but they grit their teeth and force a fake expression of sincerity to avoid confrontation. Sarah Jaffe’s article “Grin and Abhor it; The Truth Behind Service with a Smile” discusses the hardship and struggle women must face in the service industry by selling their personality to create a more intimate relationship with their customers. This has created a problem because now male patrons are believing that female service workers are romantically attracted to them due to this false intimacy, which is degrading and emotionally taxing on the worker's behalf. Jaffe’s article suggests that perhaps you shouldn’t give the local grocery bagger or barista

Jaffee uses multiple personal accounts and statistical data as evidence to validate her claims that there is a problem with how women in the service industry are treated.

Jaffee uses several accounts from different women of how they were treated by male patrons while working in the service industry. Jaffee even includes her own experience working as a waitress and talks about how customers have inappropriately touched her, asked personal questions better left unanswered, and given unwanted and unwarranted phone numbers instead of a tip. Many women who have worked in the service industry have experienced these problems directly and can relate to Jaffee, which effectively creates a personal relationship with her audience. This problem doesn’t only apply to adult women as Jaffee uses a statement from Grace Bello from Jezebel on how even when she was only seventeen, “she found herself on the top of a list created by male coworkers rating the women’s breasts and behinds.”. Bello goes on to mention that she was encouraged by her boss to flirt and dress “sexy.” All of this was done because male

Noah would later realize that Pret a Manger was forcing a standard of behavior on its employees, that required them to make emotional connections to all customers. By using a man’s perspective, Jaffee can provide evidence of how many men can be unaware they are perpetuating the extra emotional labor women must face in the service industry. This allows the male audience to realize maybe they’re enablers in this system and become aware of how they treat female social workers. With this awareness, Jaffe’s evidence becomes clear and the male audience realizes that this is a problem. By using a man’s perspective as evidence, Jaffe can back up the claims she made with the accounts of women in the service industry. When all the workers seem interested in any man that comes in the business, perhaps this type of relationship is required of the women that work there. This should be unsettling for the audience as no one should be forced for low pay to do something that is uncomfortable for the worker. Having to put intimacies out on the table for anyone that walks into the work place validates Jaffe’s claim of women’s mistreatment in the workplace. Jaffe also points out that if the Pret a Manger employee wasn’t a conveniently attractive “slender platinum