Markets and Bodies by Eileen M. Otis

Author:Eileen M. Otis [Otis, Eileen M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, General
ISBN: 9780804778350
Google: g5I2_HAoegYC
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2011-12-07T03:22:17+00:00

Training to Sell

Customer service at the KT focuses on selling hotel services to guests, who have often negotiated relatively low-cost accommodation. The hotel seeks to recoup this loss with services and consumption. Instead of immersing in customer preferences, frontline workers invested their energy in developing nuanced knowledge of the food and services provided by the hotel’s outlets and in mastering aggressive, suggestive sales techniques designed by management to mine client expense accounts. Upon asking employees to describe their jobs, virtually every staff member responded with some variant of Yundan’s account: “My job is to promote the products of the restaurant, especially the featured items.” A 21-year-old cocktail waitress, Cuifen, answered, “The most important part of the work here is to promote the alcoholic beverages and snacks.”

Thus, in contrast to service at the BT, the KT service regime emphasized knowledge of the product over knowledge of the guest. The KT’s cost-cutting efforts prohibit investment in a computer network with PCs on each floor, which are required at the BT to record customer preferences. At the KT, staff training emphasized the use of fine-grained product knowledge to maximize customer expenditures. Management required staff to spend at least two hours in training each week reviewing procedures and developing familiarity with their outlet’s products. The daily preshift meetings at the restaurants involved role-playing, as managers asked waitresses to recite in mouthwatering detail the manifold ingredients and style of preparation of the gourmet dishes served on the menu. During one role-playing session the supervisor asked about an extensive number of menu items, moving through each at a rapid clip, demanding details about flavoring and cooking method, all of which the waitress answered completely and confidently. The supervisor also asked for recommendations, which the waitress offered without flinching. Like a drill instructor, the supervisor barked requests and questions gruffly while the waitress answered with little emotion or expression in her voice.

During these daily exercises managers did not comment on workers’ style of delivery, facial expression, or comportment. A supervisor in the Chinese restaurant explained, “I ask how various different dishes are made, vegetables, which types you blanch, which you stir-fry, how you cook them to retain their color, and so on.” Waitresses learned the names, origins, texture, density, and flavor of the rare sea life in the nine large tanks where the fresh stock of fish on the menu are displayed. Cocktail waitresses memorized the descriptions, as well as the English and Chinese names, of the dozens of Western beverages purveyed in the nightclub and lounges. Each night they are to promote drink and appetizer specials. A mantra of preshift meetings in the cocktail lounge was, “Before you do anything else, ask them to try the featured drinks.”

Unlike at the BT, appearance and hygiene are not intensive sites of managerial intervention. For instance, there is no minimum height requirement. The employee handbook does not specify guidelines for appearance. Nevertheless, workers engage in self-surveillance to ensure their physical and moral distinction from escorts working at the hotel.

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