In the Heat of the Moment: The Emotional Labor Strategies of Women Restaurant Servers Responding to Sexual Harassment

The #MeToo movement highlights workplace sexual harassment's pervasiveness across occupations and industries. Restaurant servers in particular report high rates of sexual harassment due to the gendered expectations and power imbalances that characterize this line of work, with servers facing harassment from co‐workers, managers, and customers. Sexual harassment and unwanted sexual attention from customers are especially problematic because servers often must navigate the difficult situation of continuing to serve customers whose behavior has crossed the line. Using interview data collected from 31 predominantly white restaurant servers, we conducted a thematic analysis of the emotional labor they perform in response to sexual harassment and unwanted sexual attention from customers. Findings suggest a variety of strategies utilized by servers facing sexual harassment, including managing their outward emotional expressions, feigning laughter, avoiding the customer, and strategically managing their personal information. Servers described engaging in these responses in order to prioritize the customer experience but also sometimes to push back in subtle ways. All told, our findings highlight how the complex and varied emotional labor strategies used by servers as they navigate sexual harassment and unwanted sexual attention from customers constitute an additional layer of work restaurant servers are called upon to perform.