Being the youngest person in the company AND being specifically requested by the CEO to attend a conference on the other side of the country sounds impressive. It sounds like a dream. You get to experience the freedom of traveling and staying in a hotel alone. You get to meet dozens of scientists and researchers who are all amazed that someone so young could be trusted as one of only two people to help run a corporate workshop. On top of all of this, you get to carpool with a coworker who has really interesting insights into your field of study. Everything is perfect. Until the group dinner.

Ah, group dinners. They say they’re optional but you know the truth. If you don’t go and interact with the rest of the people from the conference, you look bad. And being the youngest person, there’s no blending into the group. You would stick out like a sore thumb if you didn’t go. So you do it anyway, even though your social battery is way below zero from an almost 12 hour work day. Good for you!

All is going well until you start to notice that the coworker who you were carpooling with is drinking a lot. No one is stopping him. Hell, they’re drinking too. As the night progresses, he gets drunker and drunker. But he’s probably fine, right? He couldn’t be that drunk, right? He wouldn’t do that knowing full well he is responsible for driving you back to the hotel, right? RIGHT? You try to dismiss your worries, so you don’t notice how bad it is. At the end of the dinner, another one of your coworkers asks to ride with you and the man who had been drinking. She had had a couple drinks too. Plus, she probably noticed he wasn’t 100% and didn’t want to leave you alone with him. You get to the car and realize how bad it is. He’s yelling and stumbling around. “Should we Uber?” you whisper to your female coworker. “Maybe,” she replies. But it’s too late. You three are already getting in the car. “Are you sure you’re okay to drive?” the less drunk coworker says. “Yeah yeah yeah I’m fine,” the drunker one responds. And off you go for the longest drive of your life. What should have been a 10 minute drive was 30 minutes because he kept making wrong turns. He was turning around to talk to your coworker in the backseat half the time, not even thinking to look at the road. The car was swerving between lanes as he yelled at her that he didn’t need directions. All the while you are sitting silently in the front seat, holding back the tears welling up in your eyes, trying to put on a smile so no one knows how terrified you are so be the most sober one in a car of the coworkers who were supposed to keep you safe across the country from anyone you knew or could call.

Why didn’t you say anything? Why didn’t you take an Uber? Why didn’t you say you were uncomfortable? Why didn’t you show them that you were upset and that it wasn’t okay? Why did you feel like you were obligated to ride with him in the first place? 

Maybe because you were afraid of how they would view you for going against them. You were afraid of embarrassing them for letting this happen. You didn’t want them to feel guilty. You didn’t want to seem like a burden for having standards that are too high. You didn’t want to be known as the kid who dealt with the drunk coworkers. You didn’t want to have to face them the next day with them thinking you were judging them. All these reasons and more are why you got in that car and risked your life. This is the kind of emotional labor that you take on being a young intern. Constantly second guessing yourself and kicking yourself for messing up social interactions. Trying to manage everyone’s emotions and their perception of you. All of that bracing and anticipation and anxiety waiting for those imagined criticisms (Beck 4). Your coworkers probably would have understood if you had decided to take an Uber. But on the off chance that they didn’t, you decided to put your life in danger. When will you unlearn this, and will it be too late?

Beck, Julie. “The Concept Creep of ‘Emotional Labor.’” The Atlantic, 26 Nov. 2018, ht://www.thcatlantic.com/family/acchive/2018/11/arlie-hochschild-bousework-isat-ensotional-Labor/5766371.

“The duties that are expected of you, but go unnoticed” is a quote that has been replaying in my head constantly these past few weeks. It hits home because of the reality of my mental bandwidth being a form of  labor. Emotional labor went unnoticed by myself and those around me needing this labor from me. Julie Beck’s concept of emotional labor in her article, Concept Creep, has made me reflect on the countless times I have unknowingly experienced this form of labor, causing me to question how I add onto the load of others emotional labor ? or do I appreciate more visible types of work and labor ?  

Emotional labor encompasses the unseen and often unacknowledged efforts that individuals often ignore. In my own experiences working in retail and hospitality, I have been responsible for such labor regularly, even though it might not have been in the job description.For instance, as a sales associate in retail, I would greet customers with a smile and ask, “Did you find everything okay?” that would have me engaging in small talk through the transaction or getting talked over and the customer just asking me how much? Though this may seem like a simple interaction, it involved managing my emotions to appear friendly and approachable, regardless of how I was feeling internally. There were also times when I found myself laughing at a customer’s unfunny joke while working at a sports bar, simply to maintain a positive atmosphere. These interactions, though small, added up to a significant emotional toll over my 8 hour shift 

On top of this, emotional labor often blends into physical tasks that fall through the cracks. An example that comes to mind is when I was living with roommates here at college. If someone removed the trash bag but didn’t replace it, I would end up doing it. Even though I wasn’t assigned this specific duty, I knew if I didn’t replace it, no one else would.Or I notice that the house has changed in appearance when I get home from a three-month trip to college. In my absence, my brother has been left to handle all home responsibilities, and he has done his best. However, the distinction is obvious. It serves as yet another illustration of how invisible work can accumulate when there aren’t enough hands to divide the workload. I can see how the tasks fall unevenly without me present, and the mental and physical labor I usually provide is not accounted for until I return.These duties may not seem like much individually, but together they reflect the often invisible labor that many workers perform daily. Emotional labor may not be part of a job description, but it remains an essential component of many jobs, ensuring that workplaces function smoothly, customers are satisfied, and tasks are completed even when no one is watching.

Honestly I’m just over it.

To give a bit of background, I moved to the USA from Ghana to a brand new community 7 years ago, I was pretty bummed out about moving here not only because I was leaving moving for the fourth time in 6 years but because I was stepping into a culture very different from my own with different norms and expectations. Growing up in Ghana, I understood gender roles in a certain way. Men did this and women did that, everything felt clearly defined. Moving to America, it became clear that the roles didn’t need to be so rigid and limiting to work.

In the new community, gender roles weren’t as straightforward. I saw many women in leadership positions at high-valued jobs that didn’t have to do with cooking, cleaning, and things as such, and men were involved in things I’d always associated with women. t felt like everyone could wear different hats, and it really made me start to question what I had grown up believing about what men and women “should” do. It wasn’t a simple adjustment either, not like going to the optometrist and getting a new pair of lenses after your old pair doesn’t cut it anymore. It took me time to realize how deeply those ideas had been embedded in me.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that maybe if I had stayed in Ghana, my views on gender roles wouldn’t have changed as much. Back there, no one questioned these things. They were just the way things were. In the new space, I was confronted with a different reality, one where gender wasn’t always tied to a specific set of expectations. It was like learning to see the world differently, and just like when my vision was blurry, I needed time to adjust.

I learned through all of this, though, that support makes all the difference. My family members, mostly my sister help me understand and navigate the cultural differences along with my schoolwork. Now, I’m still figuring it out, both my attention span and my understanding of gender roles. I know that with the support of my family and friends, I can keep learning and growing. Moving to a new place didn’t just change where I lived, it changed how I see the world and myself. And for that, I can say that I’m grateful

Mother are Dying. All across the world mother are dying. Black Mothers especially. The world is so cruel to black mothers and black women. Everyday black women endure the emotional labour of constantly having to “tone” themselves in order to not be perceived as aggressive or “loud and annoying” this is coupled with the fact that we are never taken serious no matter what we do, whether it be in the workplace, or a hospital we are never taken as serious as our white counterparts. Malcom X says “The most disrespected person in America is the Black woman. The most unprotected person in America is the Black woman. The most neglected person in America is the Black woman.”. This quote rings true today, yesterday, and everyday due to the misogynoirist society we’ve cultivated. This weeks materials included the documentary aftershock which detailed the painful and traumatic loss that occurred due to the loss of the black maternal figure in those families. Seeing the documentary made me think about my mother and how much she’s worked in this how much physical and emotional labour she spent on providing for us while also being forced to conform to western society as an immigrant. I thought to myself if my mother were die tomorrow what would it all be for? She slaved a way for a system that has no plans of taking care of her. The documentary also made me think of my aunt who came to this country to receive medical care for her colon cancer but was met with negligence and disregard and ultimately lost in her fight against cancer as a result. Even I as a black women wonder why I do the things I do. Why am I self conscious of how loud I am or how my hair looks or whether or not the way I’m dressed can be precisely as “ratchet”. Why do I let such a unempathetic system dictate my actions and thoughts.

All of this to say I hope we as a society can learn to be kinder to black women and hopefully I can learn to be a more accurate representation of my true authentic self-no code switching.

It shouldn’t be, really, but it is. I’m reminded of it quite a bit recently. Being incapacitated is embarrassing. Having cooties is embarrassing. Getting cooties is embarrassing. Evidence you touched something unsanitary is embarrassing. Admitting to the urgent care doctor you don’t have a primary care physician is embarrassing. Staying home is embarrassing. Getting behind on obligations is embarrassing. What even is “embarrassing”?