Receiving and Shaping the Tourist Appraising Gaze: the Lived Experience of Reception Work in the Tourism and Hospitality Industry - Tourism and Visual Culture: Theories and Concepts - page 169

dismissal, but it meant that the work they did
and their skills went largely unnoticed.
(Adkins, 1995, p. 134)

I took pride in knowing how to do my job.
I exhibited restraint in the public arena
where no one had to know what he was saying
where he got to say what he wanted to say.
After all, I was a Forum girl.

The fact that women who did not package
themselves as sexual commodities were not
given recognition or appreciation of their work
is fairly disturbing.
It is evident from what has been presented
so far that the social engineering and packaging
of receptionists in the hospitality industry pro-
vides a fertile soil for customers for fantasizing
and stretching the conventional limits of service.
In the anthology titled For a Living: the Poetry of
Work (Fulton, 1995), a number of female work-
ers speak out about how their gender is offered
as a commodity to the public through their work.
They describe how their looks, deportment, dress
and tone of voice while representing a saleable
feature of their work are used to lure customers
to their side (Fulton, 1995, p. xviii). Similarly,
workers on the reception desk as shown by the
example discussed here were expected to per-
form aesthetic labour (Witz et al ., 1998) 'dolling'
themselves up by wearing make-up, doing their
nails and wearing tight fi tting suits. Receptionists
had to wear stockings even in the warm tropical
weather so that they would not 'put customers
off' by revealing any body hair. In The Body ,
Maxine Scates (1995, pp. 288-290) describes
how she was vulnerable in her female body, and
uniform of 'gold hip-length toga and calf-high
boots with their gold trim':

Sexual harassment is a signifi cant part of the
hospitality reception work experience because of
the contested nature of relations between recep-
tionists and guests. In a study of sexual harass-
ment in the hospitality industry, Gilbert et al .
(1998) state that it is very diffi cult to defi ne sex-
ual harassment, as individuals have different
perceptions and thresholds of what constitutes
sexual harassment. This is certainly true in rela-
tion to the experience portrayed here with Mr
Abubakar, where the receptionist was uncertain
whether his behaviour constituted sexual harass-
ment because other receptionists did not fi nd his
behaviour offensive. The European Commis-
sion Code of Practice defi nes sexual harassment
very simply as, 'unwanted conduct of a sexual
nature, or other conduct based on sex affecting
the dignity of women and men at work. This can
include unwelcome physical, verbal or non-
verbal conduct' (Gilbert et al ., 1998, p. 48).

Implications for Practice and the
Professional Development
of Receptionists

The implications of the study discussed here help
understanding of the experience of reception
practice in terms of what receptionists are required
to do in the industry, why they are feeling the
way they are feeling, and the skills, competen-
cies, roles, personal attributes and dispositions
that are needed to do this challenging work. The
episode of practice explored herein has illustrated
the fl uidity, boundlessness and contradictory
nature of relations in the receptionist-guest role.
It brings into focus the fact that long-term, high-
spending guests can sometimes think that the
money they are spending can be used to stretch
the boundaries of the hotel's offerings.
It also illustrates the gendered nature and
sexualized element of reception work and the
invitation to be compliant guests. The invitational
character of hospitality has its risks, such as hop-
ing that the guests will benefi t from a hotel's
offering, whilst knowing that what occurs cannot

When I interviewed for my fi rst job
as an usherette at the Fabulous Forum,
the interviewer asked, referring
to the scanty toga I would wear,
'How would you handle a drunk?'

In this poem, Scates describes how she waited
tensely not knowing the customer's intentions,
and silently endured the unseen violation on
her person, all in the name of her professional
code of conduct:

And when the men did approach,
when they walked the cement steps
down through the loges,
the double letters of the alphabet,
to where we stood, backs to the railing,
we never knew if he needed to know
where his seat was
or if he was going to lean suddenly,
whisper lewdly - but if he did,