ABSTRACT
Affected labourers' face a troubling tension: between enjoying the immediate benefits awarded by the job, and feeling stuck and unfulfilled in terms of their career and lifestyle desires, because the short-term benefits attach to the job largely make up for, or mask, its limited long-term vocational trajectory. Workers were hesitant to project themselves into the future through their occupation, evidenced in the fact that most of them wanted to get out of the industry eventually. Their oscillation between loving and begrudging the job on a day-to-day basis illuminates the way pleasure in the heat of 'the moment' had a greater intensity and vocational influence than the more common painful collisions from which they detached. The interactional ecology of ephemerality is further shaped through the personal investment workers tended to make in the venue, lifestyle, and short-term rewards, in response to their being moved by situational joy.
