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!'"ARTISAN REVIEW
ployee must be part of a bureaucratic enterprise, in which his work is
supervised by an authority over him. Second, it must be his regular
business to contact a public from within this bureaucracy; he is
thus the bearer of the firm's good name before anyone who cares to
show up. Third, the public which he contacts must be anonymous, a
mass of urban strangers.
One of the biggest of the several personality markets that may
be isolated for study involves the salesperson in the metropolitan de–
partment store. Unlike the small independent merchant, the sales–
person cannot haggle over prices. Prices are fixed by other employees
of the bureaucracy. She cannot form her character by buying cheaply
and selling wisely. Experts fix the market price; specialists buy the
commodities which she is to sell. She cannot form her character by the
promotional calculations and self-management of the classic heroes of
liberalism or of the new entrepreneurs. There is only one area of her
occupational life in which she is "free to act." That is the area of her
own personality. She must make of her personality an alert, obsequious
instrument whereby goods are distributed.
The white collar worker, like the wage worker in a modern fac–
tory, is alienated from the tools and products of her labor; indeed, she
docs not even mix labor with raw stuff to produce things. The white
colbr worker on a personality market must not only sell her time and
energy; she must also "sell herself." In the normal course of her work,
she becomes self-alienated. For, in the personality market, the person–
ality itself, along with advertising, becomes the instrument of an
alien purpose.
If
there are not too many plant psychologists or personnel experts
around, the factory worker is free to frown as he works. But not so
the white collar employee. She must put her personality into it. She
must smile when it is the time to smile. An interviewer, working in the
biggest store in the world, recently observed of one of her experienced
sales colleagues: "I have been watching her for three days now. She
wears a fixed smile on her made-up face, and it never varies, no mat–
ter to whom she speaks. I never heard her laugh spontaneously or
naturally. Either she is frowning or her face is devoid of any expres–
sion. Vvhen a customer approaches she immediately assumes her hard,
forced smile. It amazes me because although I know that the smiles
of most salesgirls are unreal, I've never seen such calculation given
to the timing of a smile. I myself tried to copy such an expression,
but I am unable to keep such a smile on my face if it is not sincerely
and genuinely motivated."
