In the ‘Blink’ of an Eye — American High-End Small Retail Businesses and the Public Workforce System

Drawing on 25 in-depth interviews with hiring managers and visibly tattooed respondents, this article explores the nature of prejudice surrounding body art in the service sector. It focuses on the impact of visible tattoos on employment chances. The study reveals a predominantly negative effect on selection, but the extent of employer prejudice is mitigated by: where the tattoo is located on the body; the organization or industry type; proximity of the role to customers; and the genre of the tattoo. Employer prejudice against tattoos is also driven largely by hiring managers' perceptions of consumer expectations regarding body art in the workplace.

Section: The Hiring Managersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Visible tattoos in the service sector: a new challenge to recruitment and selection

Timming

2014

“…Aesthetic labourers are often described in relation to the dual foci of 'looking good and sounding right' Williams and Connell, 2010;Karlsson, 2012), but according to Butler (2014), the 'sounding right' side of the equation has been marginalised in favour of studies that focus on physical appearance (Pettinger, 2004;Gatta, 2011;Timming, 2015). Through a sociological experiment carried out on participants with management experience in the US labour market, this paper shifts the emphasis away from the visual dimensions of employment-the focus of the lion's share of research on aesthetic labour-and towards its under-investigated auditory and aural dimensions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The effect of foreign accent on employability: a study of the aural dimensions of aesthetic labour in customer-facing and non-customer-facing jobs

Timming

2016

Acknowledgements: I want to thank the editor and three anonymous reviewers for very helpful comments. I also want to thank Dr Yuni Kim for her help. The results suggest that the managerial respondents actively discriminate in telephone-based job interviews against applicants speaking Chinese-, Mexican-and Indian-accented English, and all three are rated higher in non-customer-facing jobs than in customer-facing jobs. Job applicants who speak British-accented English, especially men, fair as well as, and at times better than, native candidates who speak American English. The paper makes a contribution to the sociological literatures surrounding aesthetic labour and discrimination and prejudice against migrant workers.

“…That is not to say that all the characteristics sought were necessarily consistent with high skill. Some employers demanded attributes such as physical attractiveness, although contextualised and stylised selfpresentation were generally more important, reflecting the desired aesthetic labour for highend fashion retailers (Gatta, 2011;Pettinger, 2004;Warhurst and Nickson, 2007a). The 25 consumption of style that enabled employees to gain some of the necessary product knowledge may be associated with middle classness and affluence, contributing to the idea of a labour aristocracy in high-end retail settings (Warhurst and Nickson, 2007b).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…More specifically, in fashion retail we argue, drawing on and extending the work of Gatta (2011), Pettinger (2004 and Williams and Connell (2010), that there are differences in price, service model and the type of employees deemed to best represent that model. With regard to price, we distinguished between cheap; affordable/mid-range; high-end and luxury.…”

mentioning

confidence: 90%

Skill requirements in retail work: the case of high-end fashion retailing

Nickson

Price

Baxter-Reid

et al. 2016

This article considers skill requirements in retail work, drawing on the example of high-end fashion retailing. It considers debates about the required 'soft' and 'hard' skills for such work. Drawing on Cockburn's (1983) typology of: skill residing in the worker; in what is required to perform a job; and as a socially constructed political concept, it seeks to offer more nuanced discussion of the nature of skills in retail work beyond the usual characterisation of such work as being inherently low skilled. Data is reported from 37 interviews with managers, supervisors and employees in a range of high-end fashion retailing outlets. The article recognises how this work was seen as skilled by the interviewees, particularly with regard to the desired product knowledge and selling ability required for such work. Lastly, it seeks to refine Cockburn's typology in understanding skill requirements in retail work.