Week 7: Follow-up Questions

This week I didn’t try to interview a lot of new people. Instead, I went back to a few workers I already talked to and asked more follow-up questions. I wanted to understand not just what they do, but why they react in certain ways.

When I asked why they don’t speak up, most of them said it’s not worth it. One worker told me that even if you say something, nothing really changes, and it might even make your situation worse. Another said that after working for a long time, you kind of learn what is “safe” to say and what is not. So it’s not like they don’t have feelings, it’s more like they choose to control them. At the same time, I started organize my notes and noticed some repeated ideas. Words like “endure,” “no choice,” and “just get used to it” came up a lot. This made me feel like emotional labor here is not something special or occasional, but something very normal in their daily work.

Compared to before, I feel like I’m starting to see a clearer pattern, not just individual stories but something more shared across different workers.