Working Conditions that Promote Fast Food Workers as Sexualized Objects, Robots, and Animals.

Veronica Hamilton, Research Director, UC Santa Cruz Center for Labor and Community

Many of the bargaining proposals advanced by Starbucks Workers United sought to address grievances which stem from workplace policies and practices that objectify workers. Objectification and dehumanization of workers is facilitated by the profit-motive defined by capitalism, unequal power dynamics, and the exchange of money. Researchers have begun to explore objectifying working conditions, with particular emphasis on work that is fragmented, repetitive, and other-directed (e.g., assembly-line factory work; Baldissarri et al., 2022).

Building on theories of objectification and dehumanization (Baldissarri et al., 2022; Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997; Haslam, 2006; Nussbaum, 1995), this study investigated Starbucks workers’ perceptions of their working conditions. Integrating customer service expectations into existing models, this study sought to expand existing research on working objectification. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 18 Starbucks baristas and shift supervisors to explore workplace experiences of objectification and dehumanization, including racist, classist, and sexist interactions with customers and management, as well as store policies. The research team used thematic analysis to analyze the interviews.

The findings illuminate power dynamics and workplace conditions that reflect core facets of objectification, including instrumentality, fungibility, violability, ownership, and the denial of agency, autonomy, and subjectivity. For example, one participant described the insidious nature of violability at work when they said “Partners will always be like, ‘Yeah, you're a Starbucks worker when your hands are rough, dry, and burnt [from the] sanitizer and [sore from] all the gripping, and then the cheese falling on you.’” Workers are physically marked by unsafe working conditions, in which the required sanitizing solution can cause contact dermatitis and food preparation practices regularly result in burns.

Similarly, another participant expressed how classist stereotypes about service worker competence dehumanizes workers when she said “When we didn't get it right, it would be [like] we're the most incompetent people, we're the worst people on the planet Earth. It's belittling and it's making us feel like we're not worth breathing. It's just so dehumanizing.” Workplace policies, including chronic understaffing and a culture of customer is king, create an environment in which workers have to manage customer hostility in ways that deny their personal dignity.

Descriptions of working conditions also reflected sexual objectification and dehumanization (i.e., mechanistic and animalistic dehumanization).  Several participants described the “creepy customer” who takes advantage of the unequal power dynamic to sexually harass (primarily female) workers. One participant shared, “[It feels like he looks at us] in a perverted way. I almost feel scared to turn around and make his coffee. I always keep my face towards him- I don't want to turn around. I want to keep eye contact here and not anywhere else.” Several participants noted that they would try to avoid interacting with certain older male customers in order to escape the tension between maintaining personal boundaries and fulfilling customer service expectations.

Findings from this study reflect the importance of investigating objectification and dehumanization at work. Working conditions at coffee shops, and fast food generally, have mobilized workers to unionize across the country. Starbucks Workers United now represent workers at over 700 locations, the California Fast Food Workers Union has helped secure a higher minimum wage for fast food workers across the state, and the Union of Southern Service Workers has led massive campaigns in support of service workers in the South, including workers from Waffle House and Dollar Tree. Worker organizing in the service industry creates an opportunity for psychologists to further explore topics such as working objectification, organizational dehumanization, and collective action.

back to menu