ABSTRACT
The intensity of 'hip' cafe and bar atmospheres, and their affective communication of an image, does much of the job for the service worker in wowing their customers, meaning that less pressure and attention is on them to create the product's message in the traditional sense of 'service with a smile'. The mental 'platform' felt by workers, because of the sensory stimuli of the venue as an assemblage with its own coordinated identity, was produced in part by the organisation of the physical spaces and the dynamics they engendered. The 'affected labourer' is required to make sense of their subjection to opposing ideas, minds, and bodies through their own experiences of being affected. It was the negative feelings induced by patrons' lack of taken-for-granted knowledge, and their treatment of workers more broadly, that mobilised their detached interaction. Feelings are superfluous to the material commodity and capitalist transaction.
