Emotional Labor

Emotional labor affects employees everyday. It especially affects employees that work in retail sales or wait on tables at a restaurant. Employees are expected to project a friendly demeanor and smile. Most of the time employees fake this. Emotional labor is a situation in which an employee expresses organizationally desired emotions during interpersonal transactions at work. Every job has a different emotional labor that is expected of them. Flight attendants should be happy while funeral directors should be sad and doctors emotionally neutral. Emotional labor can become taxing when you are expected to act a certain way but feel another way. This can lead to emotional exhaustion and burnout. Emotional labor creates problems for employees and coworkers. There can be people whom they work with that they do not like. Employees have to interact with these people on a regular basis, so they are forced to be friendly. Employees have actual emotions, which are called felt emotions. Displayed emotions are those that the organization requires workers to show and considers appropriate in a given job. Displayed emotions are the hardest for employees. Displaying fake emotions …show more content…
I am expected to smile and be friendly to every customer that I help. It can be so hard because there are so many rude customers at my store. There are some days where I cannot handle being nice to some people. It becomes draining to always smile and act courteous. I try so hard to not give attitude to rude customers. It is always nice when regular customers come in the store that I know are nice. It makes me want to be nice and converse with them. I also deal with coworkers whom I do not like. This is harder than dealing with rude customers because I see my coworkers my whole shift. I have learned to be cordial with them. Emotional labor can be hard to deal with, but it gets easier to deal with after a