Beauty Service Workers’ Encounters with Abusive Customers: Furthering the Concept of External Bullying at Work

This chapter brings novel theoretical contributions that advance the concept of external bullying at work. Based on a hermeneutic phenomenological study aimed at understanding the lived experiences of beauty service workers employed in unisex salon chains in Bangalore, India, the present chapter examines customer abuse in the context of interactive bodywork. Taking into account the stigmatized nature of beauty service work, the chapter notes that employees in salons experience customer abuse because of occupational features of a low-skilled, low-status and sexualized job, in addition to the unequal power relationship between them and their customers arising from the notion of customer sovereignty. Gender, caste and regional identity also play a role. Beauty service workers feel humiliated and helpless during negative customer encounters. However, they endure and overcome the abuse due to favourable aspects of their jobs, namely, occupational, organizational and contextual factors which make beauty service work a high-profile offering due to its commercial, professional and branded setting. The findings of the study further the aetiology of and rewrite power dynamics linked to external bullying at work. Other original contributions include contrasting external bullying at work in in-situ/traditional versus cyber/virtual environments and demonstrating dual locus workplace bullying.