Emotional labor is the effort that you exert to separate yourself from a situation in order to get your work done. For example, if you are a customer service representative, the 50 th person asking the same question must be answered as thoroughly as you served the first person. Otherwise, you are not doing your job of providing customer service because that 50 th person has no idea that you’ve answered the same question 50 times. They just need an answer.
You must swallow your irritation—separate yourself emotionally from the situation—in order to do your job. Similarly, without emotional labor, the intimidated prison guard, the judgmental social worker, the panicky 911 operator, and the empathetic bill collector fail to do their jobs.
I am thrilled to be working with Mary Ellen Guy (Florida State University) and Meredith Newman (Florida International University) on a book manuscript entitled “Emotional Labor: Putting the Service in Public Service”, examining the emotional labor demands of public servants. We interviewed and surveyed people at the Cook County Office of the Public Guardian, the State of Illinois Department of Corrections, and the Tallahassee Police Department 911 Center.