Author: Eli Wilson
Managing Portfolio Lives: Flexibility and Privilege Amongst Upscale Restaurant Workers in Los Angeles
Precarious labor conditions would appear to make many frontline service jobs in the United States undesirable to most American workers. Yet these jobs might complement, rather than infringe upon, the broader lifestyles of those who choose to engage in them. Drawing on three years of ethnographic research with front of the house restaurant workers in Los Angeles, I show how young, middle-class workers navigate "portfolio lives"-- flexible arrangements of labor and leisure that blur the boundaries between professional employment and recreational experiences within service and retail establishments. I show how these workers leverage both personal resources and workplace structures available to them to weave restaurant jobs within their larger web of activities. I discuss how these findings extend theories of portfolio careers and boundary-less employment to the urban U.S. service economy.