Beasting or Bullying: Managing Emotions in Fitness Professional Worker/Client Relationships

This paper explores the connection between managed emotions and workplace bullying between workers and long-term service relationships with clients. The material used in this exploration arose from an eight-month long ethnography in a small, privately own fitness facility in the UK. The thematic analysis of material contains excerpts from field notes from participation observation, observations, informal conversations, and semi-structured interviews. The paper unveils how group membership can influence perceptions of when, and if, emotions are managed. The experiences demonstrate that managed emotions and types of bullying occur by both the fitness professional and the clients in the service space and thus co-created rather than isolated incidents.