Smiling, Deferring, and Flirting

Abstract

Using a gendered organization perspective, this research examines how restaurants structure gendered service encounters and how table servers perform gendered scripts of good service. Interview data from integrated wait staffs in five kinds of restaurants reveal three scripts of good service—friendliness, deference, and flirting. Waitresses were perceived as stereotypically friendly and openly displayed cheerfulness in coffee shops. Resisting subservience was easier for waiters and in restaurants that gender the work role as “waitering.” Waitresses performed a “job flirt” in restaurants that cast the work role as “waitressing.” To give good service is to “do gender” by performing gendered scripts, by differentially applying scripts to waiters and waitresses, and by structuring scripts into waitering and waitressing work roles.

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