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Aesthetic Labour At The Coffee Shop: Exploring Young Workers' Perceptions Of The Service Encounter, Diana Judit Szabo

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Using qualitative data gathered from in-depth interviews, this research aims to elucidate how young coffeehouse baristas experience the service encounter. As "aesthetic labourers," baristas are hypothesized to possess a certain level of embodied capital, which empowers them in their interactions with customers. However, many young interactive service workers are stopgap workers who do not intend to make careers out of their part-time jobs. How does their unique position in the labour market influence the ways in which these workers experience employment in the lower tier of the service sector? The findings suggest that age and class intersect in the coffeehouse …