A customer service job where you can be merely polite and professional without also having to be artificially cheerful and enthusiastic. Or, if you must put on a show, at least be paid appropriately for the extra work you're doing.

> What's the alternative? A customer service job where you can be rude?

There is a lot of room between "faked niceness" and "rudeness". Nothing bad would happen if employees were allowed to behave neutrally towards customers.

Yes, it is a cultural norm. It varies from culture to culture.

There are lots of countries / cultures where "neutral" customer service - say, at a restaurant - is perfectly fine. Others have a baseline expectation for "friendly" service. To the latter, the former might come across as rude...

By the end of each day, I was completely fucking drained, and the fact that I was sending out dozens of job applications every day for years to get out of that role was not lost on me.

Different jobs require very different degrees of emotional labour.

I have to be civil and professional with a boss and colleagues who'll be civil and professional with me. That's true of almost all jobs.

But think of when you're cancelling your cable TV, and you have to wait on the phone for a long time then go through two different departments who'll try to convince you not to cancel. The workers get bonuses if they convince you not to cancel, and get fired if they don't convince enough people. Can you imagine how much of that job would involve getting yelled at by people, who are frustrated they've been on the phone for 45 minutes and they just want to cancel their damn cable?

That is emotional labour.

Create a good work environment, pay enough, and offer enough benefits that your employees are actually happy rather than having to admonish them into faking it. This has the added benefit of creating demand that allows the company to be more selective.

All of your examples are much less effort than putting on a fake persona for eight hours a day. Most of us would be pretty drained after an eight hour, cameras on Teams meeting with our boss' boss and that's pretty much what customer service is.

Clearly you haven't been to some cities in the northeast US :).

I can empathize that someone from a place where everyone is politely addressed as "Sir" or "Ma'am" might find interactions jarring if they don't begin with a "hello, how are you doing today?"

she placed my accent correctly, asking if I was taking the train to New York "like all the other young kids with backpacks". I bellyached about the humidity in July and she let out a deep laugh. she wrapped the sandwich in halves since it would be easier to carry when I already had so much.

I still think about that interaction. I think that the Northeast has a charm to it developed by centuries of their communities existing in such tight quarters (albeit ones with a history of bitter sentiments and actions against Black people like Boston, South Philly, etc.). I wish strangers talked to each other more, because maybe that takes the edge off of directness.