How Is Stress Experienced in Work-Organizations Such As Restaurants?

Olga Andrukiewicz (64992) Nadja Nielsen (60195) Filippos Pappas (61160)

How is stress experienced in work-organizations such as restaurants?

Keywords: work-related stress, restaurants, stress, hospitality

Characters: 108.409

Psychology of Everyday Life Project Supervisor: Anette Løw T. Aboulafia

Roskilde University Copenhagen, 2019

Abstract Stress is phenomenon that has always been with us since the rise of humankind. Stress has evolved its meaning many times throughout history and we can argue that stress with one word is adaptation. It is what helped us to survive and thrive as well as defined our battle with the milieu. During our daily life we are more than often exposed to various kind of stressors which we may not be even aware of. With that reason ,stress can become a permanent part of some aspects of our lives. It can either be a positive (eustress) as well as negative (distress) stress. Work takes about one-third of the average person life. This is why defining the appellation of work related stress was such eagerly accepted topic of researches and observations. The concept tried to describe stress causes, factors, symptoms as well as coping mechanisms in the working area. That type of stress can be perceived as another way of human adaptation to the modern pace of life. Many companies made an effort through human resources programmes to reduce the effects of work related stress as it seems to be loss-making for both the individual’s health and the productivity and thus profit of the company.

Abstrakt

Stress er et fænomen som altid har været en del af os siden menneskets opstanden. Stress har udviklet sig og dens betydning har skiftet mange gange gennem historien. Dog kan vi argumentere for, at stress kan med et ord beskrives som tilpasning. Det har været en del af menneskets overlevelse og har drevet os og defineret bekæmpelsen af vores miljø. Igennem vores daglige liv vi er mindre eller højere grad eksponeret til forskellige stressfaktorer, endda nogle vi muligvis ikke er opmærksom på. På baggrund af dette, kan stress blive en permanent del af nogle aspekter af vores liv. Dette kan enten være positiv stress (eustress) som det kan være negativ (distress) stress. Denne rapport vil, gennem en fænomenologisk tilgang, undersøge arbejdsrelateret stress og dens effekter på individet. Denne rapport har fokus på restaurationsbranchen, hvor seks interviews fra tre forskellige restauranter i København er udført.

Table of Contents

Abstract 2

Introduction 4

Problem formulation 5

Historical overview of stress 7

Methodology and Theory of Science 17

Theoretical framework 19

Theory of Appraisal 25

Restaurant structure 27

Analysis of Restaurant ‘B’ 28

Analysis of restaurant ‘F’ 32

Analysis of restaurant ‘O’ 39

Discussion 44

Bibliography 44

Introduction

“How do you experience stress at work?” we asked six different employees working in three different restaurants placed in Copenhagen. This report will take point of departure with the notion of stress and how it is perceived and experienced across different working environments and different people. The following report will thus investigate the phenomenon through a hermeneutical and phenomenological approach, as we wish to obtain a deeper understand through people’s descriptions of what stress is and how it is experienced. The restaurant business is a business that has not been well-studied in the past and it has actually been hard for us to find any material of such explorations. Working in such arena is known to be stressful, especially for the popular restaurants. Our interest was thus sparked, for that exact reason that we all work as waiters and waitresses in which we obtain a pre understanding of how stressful the job can be and how it simultaneously can affect the well-being. Nevertheless, we were still curious to identify how stress appears and in which forms. Why do we feel strain in certain situations and how? By utilizing theories regarding stressors that occur within organizations, as well as leveraging the elements of appraisal, made it possible to answer those questions as well as provide us with proper lenses when conducting our interviews. A historical overview of stress will be delineated, as we believe that it enables a clearer and deeper understanding to the phenomenon and its scientific realms before collecting empirical data. The historical overview will also add in our perception of what stress is and how it can be defined as well as how the notion of stress evolved and we can now talk about the contemporary concept of work related stress. Furthermore, we will include a theory of personality and transactional psychology in order to identify noticeable connections between personality and the experiences of stress. In addition, we assume that different people have different encounters depending on both environmental and psychological factors. After the theoretical part, another part, that of analysis follows. In the part of analysis we analyse three different restaurants namely restaurant ‘B’, ‘F’ and ‘O’ and the interviews from six in total interviewees working on these restaurants. The interviewees were of random

nationalities and their experience in restaurant business was also different. After the analysis part we close this project with the discussion and conclusion part. This project is embedded within the paradigms of psychology, with the emphasis on peoples lifeworlds that simultaneously include sensitive information. Therefore, we have been careful when conducting our interviews not to overstep any personal boundaries albeit having the subject area in mind. Stay tuned to an exploration into the notions of stress and the contributing factors that surfaces within the restaurant business.

Problem formulation

Work related stress is a very important parameter in our contemporary era. Many efforts for reasons that have to do with the human aspect of work but also reasons that have to do with the productivity of a company led to many investigations and efforts to limit stress at the workplace. Stress as a word and as a concept evolved and took many different meanings throughout its history. As we will delineate in the historical overview, stress was previously focused on the stressful events of life in its early beginnings and then changed into focusing in everyday hassles and uplifts. We find the case of work-related stress in restaurants extremely interesting for four major reasons. Firstly, it is a part of everyday life and every knowledge produced in the effort of getting to know the concept better and thus improving coping mechanisms is of extreme importance. Secondly, restaurants constitute a space of constant change of environment and thus stress. Thirdly, restaurants scenes are spaces where many young individuals take their first notion of what work is and what work-related stress can be. Fourthly, all three of us work in restaurants where we experience this kind of stress from different angles, as we posits in different positions .This reason enhances us with direct and fast access to our empirical data which in turn may create some implications we are aware of, that may result from biases of our position which we will account for later. After reading the book “Stress: A Brief History” of Cary L. Cooper and Philip Dewe, we got our first notion of how stress evolved from the early years of 20th century as a word and as a concept. We have been introduced to primary concepts such as ‘homeostasis’ and

‘flight or fight’ from Walter Cannon (1914) as well as to concept such as ‘coping’ and ‘appraisal’ mechanisms of the individual made from Richard Lazarus (1990) who is one of the most influential scholars when addressing stress. Furthermore, through this book we were introduced to Occupational and Organizational Psychology that deal with work-related stress, health and thus the efficiency of the individuals in various working situations. What troubles us, is that the book was written in 2004 and since that time already 15 years of continuous research have passed. However, the authors of this ‘last history of stress’ suggest that there should always be a period of quiet reflection. Work related stress is also a matter of personality and for that reason we also go in depth with a theory of personality and stress. The other two theories within our theoretical framework in which we will apply, are work related stress theory and appraisal theory. By combining these theories we are able to analyze our qualitative data produced from our interviews. Our main point as also explained in the methodology part is to see how individuals experiences stress through a phenomenological approach. Thus our problem formulation and subquestions are composed as:

● How is stress experienced in work-organizations such as restaurants? - What is work-related stress? - What is the relation between personality features and stress? - Why is appraisal important to the experience of work related stress? - What types of stressors can occur in a work related context and how do they affect individuals? - How does knowledge and experience affect the levels of stress?

Historical overview of stress The history of stress is a long history of constant research, debates, and shifting of meaning. History of changing the meaning of the concept various times in different contexts. From physics and biology to psychological engineering and from physiology to psychology. For Cooper and Dewe(2004) history of stress is a history of methodology with many periods of quiet reflection necessary for the further understanding of stress through the upcoming debates. For Selye, history of stress is a history full of confusion and controversy, full of debates and disputes. To get a historical overview of the concept of stress and how it evolved during the years we consulted the book by Cary L. Cooper and Philip Dewe, “Stress: A Brief History”(2004). In this book, the authors accounted for all periods where the concept of stress evolved including the scholars who played fundamental roles in understanding the concept of stress - in both physiological and psychological terms. Within this section, we will present the main shifts in the concept of stress, from the early beginnings to the twentieth century. We could easily do a whole project arguing about the different stages of stress, but in this report, we will be pleased to summarize the most important points as briefly as possible. History is fundamental and necessary as a perspective in which our understanding will get clearer, moreover, it is very important to acquire a good understanding of the past if we want to obtain a broader perspective of stress as a concept and its evolution.

The Early Beginnings of Stress The concept of stress has evolved over a large period of several hundred years if not centuries, with the last decades being “the source of immense interest” (Doublet in Cooper & Dewe,2004:1). Stress has been with humanity since its early beginnings. The concept of stress it is argued that “its discovery in the twentieth century was more of a rediscovery” (Cassidy in Cooper & Dewe,2004:1). Before the 1940s the term stress was “almost unknown outside of the engineering profession” (Haward in Cooper and Dewe,2004:2). The term of stress in the early beginnings derived from ideas such as hardship and discomfort but its meaning evolved gradually through the eighteenth and nineteenth century to mirror some sort of force, pressure or strain (Cooper & Dewe,2004:1). According to Cooper and Dewe (2004), there are two themes that have influenced the meaning and the use of the term stress that are worth mentioning before we go on with the

historical origins of the concept of stress. The first theme is being explained as: “various non-physical phenomena have been advanced as either possible causes of diseases of factors contributing to diseases” (Doublet in Cooper & Dewe,2004:2). With this theme, Cooper and Dewe (2004), emphasize conditions such as hysteria, nerves, worry, mental strain etc., being the contributors or explanations for disease. The second theme relies upon the fact that these conditions carry along with them the notion that “life places difficult demands on individuals, who then succumb under the strain to psychological or biological disease” (Abbott in Cooper & Dewe,2004,:2). In the nineteenth century, the idea that stress and strain of the modern life was a way of living under the modern pace gave its position that in the twentieth century the pace of life was the cause of most illness and disease. In the early beginning of the seventeenth century, the meaning of the term stress was a hardship. What followed was an engineering analogy of stress and the law of elasticity from Hooke. This law of elasticity gave us the notion of ‘load’ in the concept of stress. In simple terms, this analogy shows us how “the demand placed on the structure, ”stress” that area affected by the demand, and “strain” the change in form that results from the interaction between load and stress” (Cox, Engel, Lazarus in Cooper & Dewe,2004:3). So we can argue that stress is an external demand placed on a bio-social-psychological system (Lazarus in Cooper & Dewe,2004:3). This first notion that the body works as a machine followed the reasoning that “if the body were like a machine and machines are subject to wear and tear then so too would be the body” (Doublet in Cooper & Dewe,2004:3). This idea of wear and tear of life and body together with the idea that the body, as a machine like, needs some energy to function were the two ideas that derived from the engineering analogy and worked as fertile ground from what was later to come as the notion of stress. This energy seemed to derive from the mind and according to this energy the body would function well and was obviously that “the non-physical mind could influence the physical body” (Hergenhahn in Cooper & Dewe,2004:4). The twentieth century was “the century of science and technology, with the excitement of new discoveries tempered by the ever increasing pace of life” (Doublet in Cooper & Dewe,2004:5). According to Cooper and Dewe the twentieth century was the century when the use of the term stress and the discourse around it started to increase drastically. In the early twentieth century the word stress “come to be used as an analogue in the social and

biological sciences to describe a possible cause of ill health and mental disease”(Bartlett in Cooper & Dewe,2004:5). Stress was linked to notion such as worry and strain and later on this century the discussion between “hard work and worry” and “stress and strain” became more popular. The emergence of the school of functionalism in psychology played an important role in the latter understanding of the notion of stress. Functionalism is described as “a general and broadly presented point of view that stresses the analysis of mind and behavior in terms of their function rather than in terms of their contents”(Reber in Cooper and Dewe,2004:10). Therefore, functionalism was concerned with “function of mental and behavioral processes” (Hergenhahn in Cooper & Dewe:10). This desire to understand the function of the mind led to many different studies that their focus was to try to understand how the mind works and how mental hygiene could be achieved. Fatigue and mental hygiene became the next relevant concepts around the notion of stress. In many cases, fatigue and mental hygiene were viewed as the signs of the individual’s failure to successfully adjust to the pace of modern life. Fatigue studies were the earliest precursors of current stress discourse (Hearnshow in Cooper & Dewe,2004:12). This shows the importance of fatigue in performance and is also described “as the feeling of tiredness or wearingness” (Muscio in Cooper & Dewe,2004:12). Mental hygiene, on the other hand, was also rooted in work performance and industrial efficiency. In mental hygiene, the emphasis is on the “diagnosis and treatment of the minor mental troubles of the manager or the worker before they produced major and disabling problems” (Rose in Cooper & Dewe,2004:12). According to Cooper and Dewe, at the hearth of this approach was the “notion of the ‘efficient use’ of the individual in society, the idea of adjustment through [mental] hygiene” (Abbott in Cooper & Dewe,2004:12). What was next to follow are the two themes that depict the notion of mental hygiene that later on led to ergonomics and the new field of industrial psychology. The first theme was the good organization of the workplace so as to “minimize the production of symptoms of emotional and mental stability and enhance adjustment”(Rose in Cooper & Dewe,2004:12). The second theme “was concerned with the maladjusted worker, where minor mental disturbances in the worker represented a loss in industrial efficiency which could only be regained by the worker achieving maximal mental health”(Cooper & Dewe,2004:12).

Later on, in the early decades of the twentieth century, we see the emerge of psychosomatic medicine as a result of two ideas, that of the role of the mind in physical illness and that of the notion of internal conflict as a basis of mental disease (Wittkower on Cooper and Dewe, 2004:13). The term disease took many interpretations, amongst them the idea that the “relation of people to the other people around them and to the society in which they live are important causes of disease” (Hinkle in Cooper & Dewe,2004:13).

Walter Cannon Of extreme importance in the history of stress is the work of Walter Cannon. He introduced as with two important concepts that played a major role in understanding the concept of stress. The first is the concept of ‘homeostasis’. This concept depicts “the relation of the automatic system to the self-regulation of physiological processes”(Cannon in Cooper and Dewe,2004:14). Selye argued that homeostasis or ‘staying power’ as he said, is the body’s ability to maintain its own consistency. This ability of the body impressed biologists and gave us the notion of the inner stability of the body even if there is sometimes deviation for this stability. The second concept Cannon introduced as, which is still very famous, is the concept of ‘fight or flight’. According to Cannon, fight or flight mode is a general response to any stress either physical or social. Fight or flight are linked with primary emotions of fear and anger. These two emotions that lead to instincts such as run or attack have developed over many generations and summed up from Cannon to the fight or flight response.

Hans Selye The next important person that influenced stress theory and research and who is described as a “celebrant of stress” is Hans Selye. To what is Selye giving emphasis is he argues that he discovers the stress syndrome and definitely not stress. Selye introduces as with the concept of Non-specificity, which was the idea that sometimes there is no particular or specific reason of being sick which he called the “syndrome of just being sick” (Selye in Cooper & Dewe,2004:16). In addition, Selye introduced as to the General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS) which was first appeared in 1936. The GAS referred to the “physiological responses to noxious agents or stressors that were all part of a coordinated protection” (Selye in Cooper & Dewe:23). Selye argued that there are three stages in this operation,

alarm reaction, stage of resistance and stage of exhaustion or death. Selye also argued that the body’s adaptive energy is finite which led to later arguments that support the wear and tear of the body. What is also important in Selye’s work is that he also made the distinction between eustress, distress, hyperstress, and hypostress. He characterizes eustress as good stress, distress as bad stress, hyperstress as overstress and hypostress as understress and he went on to add that “the essential purpose of a biological code of behavior is to arrive at a balance between the negative influences of stress finding as much eustress as possible” (Selye in Cooper & Dewe,2004:28). This statement of Selye makes clear the importance of balance and re-establishing normalcy is also important in the concept of Cannon, homeostasis.

Harold Wolff The next person who influenced the research of stress is Harold Wolff. For Wolff stress plays a major role in the aetiology of the disease. According to Wolff “the common knowledge that man [sic] gets sick when life circumstances are adverse, and is healthy when they are propitious has been here extended by precise measurements of bodily functions before, during and after periods of stress” (Wolff in Cooper & Dewe,2004:33). Wolff suggested that individual when threatened their values or beliefs “initiate responses inappropriate in kind as well as in magnitude. Such reactions, integrated for one protective purpose, and thus inappropriately used for another, can damage or destroy” (Wolff in Cooper & Dewe,2004:33). These reactions are what came later to argue that is the Protective Reaction Response. For Wolff stress is a matter of perception and each individual perceives it in a different way. This perception includes a variety of factors such as “generic equipment, basic individual needs and longings, earlier conditioning, influences, and a host of life experiences and culture pressures” (Wolff in Cooper & Dewe,2004:34). According to Wolff stress is the interaction between an individual and its environment, with the past experiences of the individual being a major factor. Concluding, Wolff argued that “since stress is a dynamic state within an organism in response to a demand for adaptation, and since life itself entails constant adaptation, living creatures are continually in a state of more or less stress”(Wolff in Cooper & Dewe,2004:35).

The debate When researchers about stress started an emphasis was mostly on stressful life events. This category helped the researchers to investigate such events by the ‘life chart’, an invention of Adolf Meyer. As Dohrenwend argued, “ if environmentally induced stress is an important factor in psychopathology in the general population, then life events are strategic phenomena on which to focus as major sources of such stress” (Dohrenwend in Cooper & Dewe,2004:42). Life chart was a diagram that depicts important life events that affect the stress levels such as change of habitat, job loss, death in the family, important births etc. This life chart provided a basis for Holmes and Rahe to develop the Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS). The SRRS based on data from life charts researched extensively many life events which numbered as 43 life events and categorized into two categories, those who refer to the lifestyle of the individual and those who refer to occurrences happen to the individual. Because the SRRS had many difficulties in measuring results efforts from other researchers focused on another scale, that of Daily Hassles. The goal of the Hassles scale was to capture the everyday life difficulties as perceived from the individual rather than generalizing into live events. According to Lazarus “experiences and conditions of daily living that have been appraised as salient and harmful to the endorser’s well-being” (Lazarus in Cooper & Dewe,2004:46). This definition depicts clearly the role of the experience as subjective. Except for daily hassles such as smoking too much, concerns about credit, not enough money for food and many more things the scale include also daily uplifts such as feeling healthy, being lucky, relaxing, making a friend and more. The list had included 117 hassles and 135 uplifts. The debate amongst critical life events and daily hassles and uplifts had just begun. One major argument is that “daily hassles provide a more direct and broader estimate of stress than major life events and are more strongly associated with the adaptational outcomes than are life events” (Kanner in Cooper & Dewe,2004:47). For Lazarus very important was the subjective part of the appraisal that should be taken into consideration. For Lazarus stress is always a product of appraisal. The debate went on for a long time studying many parameters that could influence the stress level of the individual as well as how it can be linked to a disease. After long debates and after personality being in the center of studies the study of individual differences came on the surface.

The study of individual differences seemed to be one of different perception, emphasizing on understanding the differences between people and thus their different reactions towards stress. As Cox and Ferguson argued “the question of individual differences in relation to the experience and effects of stress and in relation to coping is virtually a defining characteristic of the more psychological approaches. As a result, much research effort has been expended in exploring their nature and role, and in trying to establish the natural ‘laws’ which govern their behavior” (Cox and Ferguson in Cooper and Dewe,2004:55). Payne (1988) suggested three main categories of these individual differences, namely, genetic, acquired and dispositional in his effort to answer questions such as “how to do individual differences relate to the development of psychological strain… how do individual differences relate to perceptions of stress in the environment… do they act as moderators of the stress-strain relationship and do they affect the way people cope with stress?” (Payne in Cooper and Dewe,2004:56). History of stress has also deep roots in Sweden. Stress research started in Sweden around 1960 by Ulf von Euler who was a professor of physiology at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. Professor Euler was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 1970 for his method in of measuring stress hormones of adrenaline and noradrenaline in urine. His work was used in later on a measurement of stress in different situations including work situations. When the studies of work stress started were mostly focus in Sweden in piece-work and night shift-work. Marianne Frankenhaeuser, professor of psychology at the Karolinska Institute, having done long researches about work-related stress argued in her thesis that our biological equipment had undergone a much slower development than technology and society. The thesis of Frankenhaeuser shows clearly the discrepancy between individual, society and technology and how much we have been struggling with stress in our effort to constantly adjust. This focus on work stress gave rise to organizational and occupational psychology. Organizational psychology was dealing with the application of psychological techniques and methods to work settings that would influence the stress levels of individuals. The emphasis was the impact of the organization to the individual as well as the mental health of the individual in order to be as productive as possible.

Richard Lazarus One of the most if not the most influential scholar in the research and theories of stress is Richard Lazarus. After fifty years of research, Lazarus stated that “I would like to believe I have thrown some useful light on the never ending effort to understand” (Lazarus in Cooper & Dewe,2004:67). Lazarus project named ‘The Berkeley Stress and Coping Project’ was one of the most influential projects ever done in stress research. According to Lazarus, this project went through three major incarnations. The first incarnation is the influence of appraisal, the second one is the increased interest in emotions and coping and the third one is how from a theoretical position it could be applied to everyday life (Lazarus in Cooper & Dewe,2004:69). Lazarus focus was on individual differences and he argued that how one person may react in a stressful situation that doesn’t mean that also others would react in the same way. For Lazarus in order to understand what is happening you should take account of “individual differences in motivational and cognitive variables which intervened between the stressor and the reaction” (Lazarus in Cooper & Dewe,2004:68). Lazarus also developed the Stimulus - Organism - Response model(S-O-R) that shows how the organism (individual) plays a major role in the response. At this point, the importance and influence of appraisal began to appear. The concepts Lazarus were focused on the concepts of emotions, coping with stress, appraisal, and everyday life hassles and uplifts. He researched very much how stress and coping happen to everyday life and for Lazarus being under stress is all about changing the stressful encounter in order to maintain the balance. Lazarus also developed the Ways of Coping Questionnaire in his effort to produce coping mechanisms. Lazarus during his research on stress had a shift in his interest from psychological stress to emotions. Lazarus argued that stress produces different emotions and each emotion has a different story to tell us in our struggle to adapt. Later, Lazarus developed the idea of core relational meanings, “where each emotion involves a different appraisal pattern, and a pathway for exploring the appraisal, coping and emotion relationship was established” (Lazarus in Cooper & Dewe,2004:71). Lazarus went on to describe “the transaction between the person and the environment as being defined in terms of individual meanings. It is these meanings that are the prime source of emotions and coping” (Lazarus in Cooper & Dewe,2004:71).

Appraisal According to Lazarus appraisal is a unit of analysis in psychological stress and it is the appraisal process that links the individual with the environment. For Lazarus stress had to do with the personal meaning each individual carried in the mind. Lazarus puts into two categories the appraisal process. Primary appraisal, where there is an evaluation the significance of a transaction between the person and the environment in terms of well-being and secondary appraisal which refers to the process of what can be done when a stressful transaction occurs. A lot of debates occurred from the appraisal theory such as where does appraisal process comes from, is it consciously or unconsciously and how is it connected to emotions. Another interesting debate is the subjective vs objective measurement of stress which many times divided researchers. In addition, we will go in depth with the theory of appraisal from Lazarus in our theory part.

Coping Lazarus was also very interesting in coping mechanisms. Lazarus is mentioning three principles of the coping process. “First, that coping constantly changes over the course of an encounter; secondly, that coping must be assessed as independent of its outcomes; and thirdly, that coping consists of what and individual thinks and does in an effort to deal with the demands that tax or exceed resources” (Lazarus in Cooper & Dewe,2004:79). After taken consideration of these three principles the definition of coping is as “constantly changing cognitive and behavioral efforts to manage specific external and/or internal demands that are appraised as taxing or exceeding the resources of the person” (Lazarus in Cooper & Dewe,2004:79). The use of questionnaires to measure coping led Lazarus to “five empirical generalizations, all of which have been replicated numerous times by ourselves and others” (Lazarus in Cooper & Dewe, 2004:81). According to the authors these include (a) people use a range of coping strategies in every stressful encounter, (b) some coping strategies are tied to personality variables, whereas others are tied to the social context, (c) coping strategies change from one time to another as the encounter unfolds, (d) secondary appraisals of control influence the selection of a coping strategy, and (e) coping is a powerful mediator of the emotional outcome.

Work Stress The history of work stress unfolds greatly in Occupational Health Psychology. Work stress began to appear around 1960 and its primary forms where notions of fatigue and mental hygiene. The effort of understanding the nature and the causes of work stress led organizational psychology to develop two themes around where work stress was taking place. Concepts such as the concepts below will be also analyzed in the theoretical part of this project. ‘Role ambiguity’ and ‘role conflict’, as the two types of organizational stress, played a major role in understanding work stress. Role conflict is defined “as the simultaneous occurrence of two (or more) sets of pressures such that compliance with one would make more difficult compliance with the other”(Kahn in Cooper and Dewe,2004:86). Role ambiguity was captured as the “extent to which required information is available to a given organizational position” (Kahn et al. in Cooper & Dewe,2004:86). Role ambiguity and role conflict where the rivals of next role stressor that would hold the attention of the researches that of the ‘role overload’. Role overload was defined as “standing out as another type of role conflict confronting sizeable numbers in labor force” (Kahn et al. in Cooper & Dewe,2004:88). In simple words role overload was the amount of work an individual had to do in a particular amount of time. ’Role underload’ was coined from Sales and described “as the condition where individuals are faced with task requirements that require considerably less time to do than the time available” and that may be stressful “because of its presumably boring and uninteresting characteristics” (Sales in Cooper & Dewe,2004:89). Another distinction between overload was put from Kahn as the distinction between ‘qualitative overload’ and ‘quantitative overload’. Qualitative overload had to do with the exceeding individual skills and quantitative overload with the exceeding amount of work. Beehr and Newman through their facet analysis they identified four major facets of work stressors namely: job demands and task characteristics, role demands or expectations, organizational characteristics and conditions and organization’s external demands and conditions (Beehr & Newman in Cooper & Dewe,2004:90). From this analysis, Beehr and Newman concluded into finding 37 potential causes of stress. Six categories, mentioned from Cooper and Marshall, that put stress in the individual are factors that are intrinsic to the job, career development, role in the organization, organizational structure and climate, relationships at

work, extra organizational sources of stress (Cooper & Marshall in Cooper & Dewe, 2004:91). Methodology and Theory of Science

In the following section a delineation of our theory of science and methods will be outlined. In addition, we will account for our epistemic motivation and argue for the choices we made throughout the process. The scope of the report, is through qualitative semi-structured interviews, to obtain and collect knowledge of people's experiences of stress in their work-life. Thus, our approach is of a phenomenological character as this philosophy of science would in this usage, provide us with the best tool in order to answer our problem formulation. What sparked our interest was the notion of stress in itself. The question of how people experience it, and thus cope with it. Through various of discussion amongst ourselves, we found that we all had very different ideas and own encounters with stress, which made us curious to investigate it further. As we needed to narrow down our focus, our discussion came to where we experience stress most frequently, in which we all could agree was at our workplace. We all work part-time as waiters and waitresses along to our studies in busy restaurants in Copenhagen. Working within the restaurant business, is very stressful and overwhelming at times and this made us wonder how the employees experience stress and to what extent. Simultaneously, in which situations made them feel strain and thus how and why. We took point of departure by exploring stress through a historical overview, in order to understand the phenomenon before acquiring knowledge through our interviews. According to the underpinning of phenomenology it is: “Phenomenology is best understood as a radical, anti-traditional style of philosophising, which emphasises the attempt to get the truth of matters, to describe phenomena, in the broadest sense as whatever appears in the matter in which it appears, that is as it manifests itself to consciousness, to the experiencer” (Moran, 2000:4) Consequently, we are not aiming to identify universal truths albeit subjective representation of the experiencers’ notions of stress and thus interpreted. We search for meaning through their descriptions of their own lived reality. We are not able to conclude omnipresent definitions of how stress appears and affects, nevertheless will we be able,

through six interview persons to obtain knowledge of how it can look through their acquaintance with stress. As we are three researchers working in three different organizations within the restaurant business, we chose to conduct interviews in each workplace. Here we are able to get a broader picture of stress in three different environments. Nevertheless, we are aware of the limitations of only acquiring information from six informants. Simultaneously, are we also aware of researcher-bias, as we interview fellow co-workers which then can have a certain effect while interviewing. This can e.g. be that they are less likely to explain the truth, holding back of certain opinions, or because of the transactional relationship, they are more likely to feel uncomfortable. Furthermore, we already have a presumption and pre understanding of how to work in the given organization, including having own subjective experiences with stress, which then can have an affect on the interviews. Nevertheless, we will argue, that having a hermeneutical- phenomenological approach, we are still able to view the phenomena through our interviewee’s descriptions. We chose to conduct semi-structured interviews, as it is closely linked to an everyday life conversation, furthermore opens the possibility of reflections and directions in terms of opening up for different turns in the conversation from the interviewee, making it as comfortable as possible. Also, we wanted to let the interviewee guide the way of the conversation, to gain a better insight into their lifeworld. Owing to the fact that we were in time-pressure we divided the interviews between us, which consequently made it hard to notice possible behaviour and facial expressions as we were only one person doing the interview. We composed the interview questions along with what we wished to know. Firstly, we asked how the interviewee perceives stress, as it was important for the research to understand the individuals’ perception before continuing and thus let the interviewee account for their own notion, as it may differ from others or universal understandings. We have chosen to include theory that is closely linked to our problem area. We have thus chosen to emphasize the interviewee’s descriptions in our analysis and used our theory as lenses when collecting information. Much of the utilized theory has had its purpose to understand and provide information of the notions of stress, which we then have kept in mind when conducting the interviews.

Theoretical framework

As this report aims to explore the notions of stress and nonetheless how it appears and influence the employees within the restaurant business, we found is necessary to assert knowledge of different types of stressors that surfaces at work and how these affects the health and wellbeing. Furthermore, how it can, both negatively as well as positively, shape and construct the individuals’ work experience and thus effort. The theory by O’Driscoll and Brough (2010), seven primary stressors are outlined: ‘work demands’, ‘working hours and patterns’, ‘job control’, ‘social support’, ‘work-family conflict’, ‘role changes’, and ‘anti-social behaviours’ (O’Driscoll and Brough, 2010). These contributive factors will be utilized in order to obtain an understanding of the subject matter in question. Nevertheless, do the theory focus on the psychosocial dimensions of stressors in which we acknowledge the fact that it neglects the importance of the individual's’ personality, as we believe it has an influence when talking of stress as a whole as well as when we assume that each person will react differently, when being exposed to or experience different stressors. Therefore, will the notions of personality psychology in regards to stress, be taking into account and a delineation will be accomplished later in this report. In addition, these seven factors are differentiated into three different categories; cognitive, emotional and physical stressors.

Work demands and workload In terms of work-demands and workload, a distinction has been made between challenge stressors and hindrance stressors. As the words might insinuate, the challenge stressors are associated with positive outcomes as they are proved to be linked to an increase in motivation and performance, where on the contrary, hindrance stressors were identified to have negative results. If the employee feels well-suited/dressed to obtain the given task, one is less-likely to feel strain whereas on the other side, if the person feel prevented to fulfill the task, both in terms of having the required skills and/or resources, the person are more exposed to feel strain. Another aspect is the notion of role stressors. These are articulated through the concepts of ‘role ambiguity’, ‘role conflict’ and ‘role overload’. ‘Role ambiguity’ is

explained as if the person feels uncertain about how to perform one’s role, which also includes if the employee lacks information as well as unpredictability of the consequences that might occur of one’s behaviour. ‘Role conflict’ happens when the employee experience incompatible demands, such as when the manager requires the person to undertake more than one complex task at the same time, moreover when the expectations are communicated by different people. ‘Role overload’ is referred to the number of different roles a person has to partake at the same time. This can result into leaving the person confused about his/her ability to perform those roles. The theory thereafter discusses which stressor contributes more or less to detrimental health and well-being, nevertheless is it being argued that they all play a vast part depending on the job and simultaneously the organization itself.

Working-hours and patterns It is not a new assumption, that excessive working hours and workload might lead to feeling stressed. However, it is being argued that this might not be the fact and there has been made a negative association with this assumption. According to a meta-analysis ny Ng and Feldman (2008), other variables have been shown to play predominant roles:

“(...) it is likely that other variables function as moderators of the relationship between working hours and well-being. For example, the type of work being performed, the level of responsibility the person has in their role, along with psychosocial factors such as the quality of relationships with other people at work, may all influence the link between work hours and health and well-being” (Driscoll and Brough, 2010:63).

As there has been no conclusive findings of working-hours that negatively influence health and well-being, the argument touches the fact that this might be different across different individuals and settings. In this regard, we will try to identify certain tendencies through our qualitative interviews with the employees in their own work-setting.

Job control One major influential factor, is the assertion of job control. This is being explained through the employee having control over various aspects of their job, for instance their work hours, start/finish times, how they complete the task as well as how to structure those tasks. Hence, the work of Karasek (1979) is being leveraged. According to Karasek (1979), it is not necessarily the amount of work hours or work demands that negatively strains the individuals’ wellbeing, these do not even affect the employee if they contain a high level of personal control. If the employee has no or very little job control they will experience high levels of psychological strain (Karasek in O’Driscoll and Brough, 2010). Furthermore, in terms of work demands and the aforementioned timeframe pressure, (if the employee has too little time to complete a given work task), this will thus induce anxiety. However, through the work of Fox, Dwyer, and Ganster (1993), this anxiety can be reformed if the employee: (a) are able to make their own decisions concerning their work (decision authority) and (b) can use a variety of skills in their work (skill discretion)” (O’Driscoll and Brough, 2010:65). Also, is the notion of asserting control over one’s environment considered utmost important. If the employee do not have the feeling of being able to master their own work-environment, it will create feelings of incompetence and thus a reduction in subjective well-being both physical and psychological will occur. Another argument outlined, is the definition of ‘control’ in itself. The idea is that job control may operate as a buffer only if it is closely linked with the employees’ personal attribution. Here, self-efficacy and the employee’s dispositional locus of control is highlighted as a major factor. Interestingly, a study was made with service employees where a three-way interaction was introduced: (stressors x control x locus of control). Workers, who obtain a high internal locus of control, having control over the job diminished the negative impact of creating psychological as well as physical strain. On the contrary, those leveling high in external locus of control, the opposite effect in which having high job control showed lower subjective well-being and physical health. Conclusively, it is argued through extensive studies, that containing more control in certain conditions may have detrimental effects on the person’s well-being. One example of control having negative impacts, is explained as when the level of control exceeds their desired amount or if they feel uncomfortable with it. Simultaneously, will the increased

control lead to greater expectations, both from the managers as well as co-workers, in terms of responsibility and accountability for the tasks’ outcomes which may not coincide with the employees preferences. Hence, this will create anxiety for the person:

“(...) having high control but low mastery may also create anxiety for the person, as they may feel that they are responsible for their performance when in reality they believe they lack the skills and competencies needed to perform the task efficiently and effectively” (O’Driscoll and Brough, 2010:66).

This leads to a discussion of how co-workers as well as the role of the managers affects the employee in terms of stress. The notions of social support will thus be utilized in the next section.

Social support Social support is defined as the support the individuals receive from other people in their environment. Here, the dominant sources of support are co-workers and managers etc., where friends and family dominates the social support outside of work. Four different kinds of support are mentioned: practical help (instrumental support), emotional support, advice and guidance (informational support), and appraisal support (feedback on one’s behavior). It is being argued, that social support has made significant marks on psychological health and well-being: “One explanation for this effect is that support from other people increases the individual’s self-esteem, hence making them less susceptible to the deleterious effects of stressors in their environment” (Cohen & Wills, 1985 in O’Driscoll & Brough, 2010:69). In addition, the mechanism of social support can operate as a buffer for stress and psychological strain which has been utilized through a model called ‘stress-buffering hypothesis’. The model suggests that when the employee is confronted with challenges or one of the abovementioned stressors such as ‘role ambiguity’, ‘role conflict’ and ‘role overload’, they seek for social support in the belief that it will help to reduce strain. According to the ‘stress-buffering hypothesis’, social support works as a moderator in the sense that it: “(...) shields or protects individuals from potentially harmful effects or aversive circumstances” (O’Driscoll & Brough, 2010:70). This can either be through providing practical assistance

e.g. helping the employee with a heavy workload, or through emotional support, in which helping the employee to minor their perception that the stressor causes harm to their well-being. It is therefore argued, that social support plays a significant part when it comes to feeling stress and psychological strain. Nevertheless, O’Driscoll and Brough (2010) account for the complexity and nonlinear effects of social support as it is ambiguous and varies across situations. Therefore, they argue for more extensive explorations. The theory outlined above, the work that has been accomplished is extensive in which we thus only take use of what we find as necessary according to our problem area as well as our subject matter in question. For example, the notion of work-family conflict has been excluded, as we find it too limiting according to our timeframe, as well as unnecessary to investigate, as it is beyond the scope of the report. Nevertheless, do we find it extremely interesting to have been able to explore the impacts of work-related stress carried out in an everyday life. Perhaps this report could be a stepping stone towards doing such research.

Personality and stress We have now investigated different contributive factors of stress that can affect the individual’s health and well-being that can occur within their work-environment. As earlier stated, the theory emphasizes the psychosocial paradigms of stress, in which we argue for the importance of an inclusion of interactional as well as transactional notions such as personality psychology. As every person is different autonomous agents having individual thoughts, we hypothesize that stress is experienced differently from person to person. Nevertheless, as explained in our methodology section, will we be able to deduct mechanism and tendencies when exploring individual experiences from three separate work organizations all within the restaurant business. Much of the following theory concerns with the notions of coping with stress, which we have chosen to exclude from this report as it is beyond the scope. The following theory concerns the notions of personality and stress. More specifically, personality and transactional stress paradigms are in focus, where the concepts of the Big Five are being leveraged. The Big Five is known for the five personality traits also called ‘OCEAN’: Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism. However, as our problem formulation does not question which types of

people are more or less exposed to stress and why, but rather how people in their work life experiences stress; we will therefore not go in depth with the Big Five. We will however instead account for how and why personality plays a vast part in regards to stress, in order to obtain a clearer understanding of the experiences of stress and its’ functions. Vollrath (2001) argues that transactional psychology outlines four principles: (1) behavior is a function of a continuous and bi-directional process of person-situation interaction; (2) the individual is an active, intentional agent in this process; (3) motivational, emotional, and cognitive variables play determining roles on the side of the person; (4) the psychological meaning a person ascribes to the situation is essential in determining behavior (Vollrath 2001:335-37). These four principles work together to create an idea of the individual’s personality and personhood. In regards to the experience of stress, can therefore not be left alone to only environmental or psychological causes, but works dualistically. This was established through the study by Lazarus et. al.: “The pivotal postulate of their theory is that stress is inherent neither to the environment nor to the person alone, but results from the ongoing relationship between them, which they called transaction” (Lazarus et. al in Vollrath, 2001). Thus, we can establish that stress occurs both through environmental and psychological impacts. Additionally, the question is of what kind of person chooses and shapes what a stress-situations is, as these are not objective perceptions. Nevertheless can personality not be viewed as static as it changes throughout time and different settings. Therefore, we find it too risky to determine and include notions of personality traits, as we are not able to identify our interviewee’s personalities due to the limitations and scope of the report. Theory of Appraisal As previously mentioned, Lazarus accounts for the individual differences plays a major role in the appraisal and coping processes of psychological stress. Lazarus in his early beginnings believed that cognitive mediation is at the heart of psychological stress (Lazarus in Cooper & Dewe,2004:68). This was the beginning for the concept of appraisal and appraising that define this mediating process. From the model of Stimulus-Response (S-R) he moved to the model of Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) which gave a new motivation to psychology.

After the third incarnation of the Berkeley Stress and Coping Project, the theory of stress of Lazarus focused on the two main concepts of appraisal and coping. We need to bear in mind here that the theory of appraisal took place when Lazarus had a shift from psychological stress to emotions in his effort to analyze the variety of emotions that take place when feeling stressed. For Lazarus, stress is not a unidimensional variable but rather a complex phenomenon that leads and causes various emotions. These emotions have always a personal meaning and as such should be interpreted. In this theory part we will analyze the appraisal theory of Lazarus which we find in the Handbook of Personality: Theory and Research. According to Lazarus “how a given individual reacts emotionally to an encounter depends on an evaluation of what the encounter implies for personal well-being, which is what ‘appraisal’ means in our usage” (Lazarus,1990:616). This definition of Lazarus shows us how appraisal is an individual process that differs from person to person and has many variables that we will analyze below. For Lazarus there are two distinct types of cognition involved in the process of appraisal. The first is how the individual constructs representations of what is happening. We construct our reality through representations and are: “these representations, which reflect knowledge or beliefs about what is happening, are relevant to emotion because they are the data that the person evaluates with respect to their adaptational significance. These knowledge-centered representations, or ‘situational construals’, do not directly produce emotions”(Lazarus,1990:616). Lazarus is explaining here that there is some knowledge and some beliefs that drive our levels of adaptation through our representations. The second type of cognition is “how these representations are appraised with respect to their significance for personal well-being that directly determines the emotional state” (Lazarus,1990:616). Lazarus goes on to show the connection between knowledge and appraisal, stating that is exactly that how these representations are created from knowledge and beliefs that through individual appraisal determine the emotional state. Conclusively, Lazarus argues that appraisals are strongly influenced by personality variables which depict how the appraisal is based on individual differences. In this section, we will moreover mention the major dimensional components of appraisal, which according to Lazarus are those questions that are evaluated in appraisal. To

list these six major components of appraisal we shall first make the distinction of primary and secondary appraisal. For Lazarus “primary appraisal concerns whether and how the encounter is relevant to the person’s well-being, and secondary appraisal concerns the person’s resources and options for coping with the encounter”(Lazarus,1990:618). Before we move to the six components, two for the primary appraisal and four for the secondary appraisal, an account for why they are called primary and secondary is worth mentioning. According to Lazarus, primary appraisal does not necessary precede in time in contrary to secondary appraisal. Primary appraisal is responsible for the evaluation of a transaction as ‘warm’ or ‘cold’ in terms of how much is relevant to the personal well-being. If it is not relevant then secondary appraisal is relatively unimportant. If it is important, as Lazarus argues “then secondary appraisal plays a vital role in differentiating the emotional experience”(Lazarus,1990:633). Thus, Lazarus argues that secondary appraisal is ‘secondary’ because it depends highly on the outcome of primary appraisal (Lazarus,1990:633). Both primary and secondary appraisal are interconnected in a way that shows the dual nature of appraisal as a process, that takes place in our mind and is expressed both physically but also psychologically. According to Lazarus the two components of primary appraisal are motivational relevance (or motivational importance) and motivational congruence (or motivational incongruence). “Motivational relevance is an evaluation of the extent to which an encounter touches upon personal goals and concerns –in other words, the extent to which there are issues in the encounter about which the person cares or which he or she has a stake” (Lazarus,1990:618). The second component is outlined as: “motivational congruence or incongruence refers to the extent to which a transaction is consistent or inconsistent with what one wants –that is, the extent to which it either thwarts or facilitates personal goals”(Lazarus,1990:618). These two components of primary appraisal are extremely important as they show the extent to which an encounter and/or a transaction affects the individual as well as what matters to the individual in terms of personal goals. The four components of secondary appraisal, according to Lazarus, are accountability, problem-focused coping potential, emotion-focused coping potential and future expectancy. As Lazarus argues “accountability provides direction and focus to the emotional response and the coping efforts motivated by it. It determines who is to receive the credit or the blame

for the harm or benefit” (Lazarus,1990:618) . Accountability is very important, as it provides the individual with an account of his/her actions. The other three components, problem-focused and emotion-focused coping potential as well as future expectancy, according to Lazarus, all deals with the evaluation of the potential, in order to change and improve one undesirable situation or even how to maintain a desirable one. More specifically: “problem-focused coping potential reflects evaluations of one’s ability to act directly upon the situation to manage the demands of the encounter and actualize the personal commitments that are brought to it” (Lazarus,1990:618). Furthermore: “Emotion-focused coping potential refers to the perceived prospects of adjusting psychologically to the encounter –in other words, of regulating the emotional state that harmful or threatening consequences generate” (Lazarus,1990:619). And Finally: “future expectancy refers to perceived possibilities, for any reason, for changes in the psychological situation that could make the encounter more or less motivationally congruent” (Lazarus,1990:619).

Restaurant structure Restaurants are included in the hospitality business along with hotels, bars, beach bars and cafes. Restaurants may offer food, drinks, coffees and other services that may include live music or various shows. Restaurants offer the experience of dining as it is described in their advertisements. Then, depending on the type of restaurant we many times can hear the expression experience of fine dining. This part of the project will give as an important insight into the structure of the restaurants and what we should bear in mind throughout our analysis and project. Some restaurants are considered relatively more cheap and some more expensive. One way that differentiates restaurants and adds prestige to their advertisement is the concept of Michelin Stars, where the restaurants depending on their way of working are getting awarded with those Stars. A restaurant can have most three stars and as many Stars it has, the more luxurious and expensive it is. Of course to get a star a restaurant must meet the specific requirements. Which can vary from the noise that is produced in the restaurant to the inches the cutleries should be on table. This also show us in a way the levels of organization that may exist mostly in Michelin Star restaurants.

Prices and ways of working also vary in restaurants that do not acquire a Michelin Star. Some restaurants have a lot of tables that can host their guests some have a few but also offer the take away option for their guests. Some restaurants have many deals, from three courses menus to up and eight courses menus. At this point we need to make an important clarification about restaurants that affects also the restaurants that we analyze. The clarification has to do with the separation of kitchen staff and floor staff. Kitchen staff includes chef, sous-chef, cookers, pastry cookers and sometimes dishwashers and floor staff includes managers, assistant managers, bartenders, waiters, runners, hostess and cashiers. With maybe small deviations these are the main professions we will find in a restaurant. The differentiation between floor and kitchen is important to us as we look at stress from the perspective of the floor. We look how people who work on the floor experience the stress. Two main differences between floor staff and kitchen staff are that firstly kitchen staff do not have direct contact with the guest and secondly that the job specifications are completely different as the kitchen cooks and the floor serves the food for a complete dining experience.

Analysis

Analysis of Restaurant ‘B’ The restaurant which from now on will be referred to as ‘B’, is placed in central Copenhagen, near New Harbour, which is open for breakfast, lunch and cozy dinner evenings. The interior design is modern-classic with a twist, with a high ceiling and fancy extravagance decorations designed by Tage Andersen, who is a regular guest in the restaurant. The pace is fast when observing the waiters and waitresses, and it does not take one long to know that they are busy. The restaurant consists of 51 waiters and waitresses - including one restaurant chef, -four managers, -three bartenders, - seaters, two persons working as dishwashers and 23 chefs in the kitchen. The total capacity of the restaurant is 177 persons, where the tables are seated two times in the evening and even more when serving lunch. The restaurant does not require the waiters and waitresses to be educated, or have other professional backgrounds, albeit demand people to have a ‘well-suited’ personality to fit into the team, moreover to be able to provide the guests a good experience

when visiting. The range of people is predominantly young adults, all from student’s who works part-time next to their studies, to those working full-time which are in-between studies, to the few who wishes to develop a career within the restaurant business. The working hours are long and mentally and physically hard, all from 10-13 hours thus the shifts requires a lot of energy to perform. The busy days along the week are Fridays and Saturdays, in which one bartender, 11 waiters, and waitresses (including food runners), two managers, one seater (in charge of reservations, welcoming guests and showing them to their table), and of course the kitchen chefs are considered one team on an evening shift. The doors are open from 5 pm, where half an hour earlier the manager calls the staff in for a briefing. Here the staff gets the needed information regarding individual tasks and focus areas, the day’s dish, the day’s wine etc., in order to be as prepared as possible. In the briefing, it is also allowed to ask questions if needed. The restaurant as an organization is well-structured and the owners provide what is needed in terms of being able to fulfill the tasks. Once a month, a staff meeting is being arranged where a debriefing and a dialogue in which a status is being leveraged. Restaurant ‘B’ is a part of a major chain in Copenhagen with approximately 500 employees in total works within 12 different restaurants. The last years, they have expanded to other big cities in Denmark. Furthermore, the chain possesses an administrative department, which takes care of present and upcoming bookings, PR, HR and so forth. After a visit to one of the restaurants, the guests are sent an email with a request to offer their visit feedback. This is used to acquire knowledge of what could be done better and if there is a need for certain changes within the organization. What needs to be considered, is the fact that the restaurant business is rather unique than many other workplaces. Some might call it ‘a type of showbiz’, as the waiters and waitresses need to inherit a role that is not necessarily their own or close to their natural habitat. The expectations to the specific role contain certain elements in behavior and acting, which therefore can be closely linked to being an actor or actress within the frames of showbiz. Some might also have heard the phrase ‘the customer is always right’ which can be well-identified in this type of business, as the restaurant depends on having customers in which leaves the responsibility of making the customer satisfied when leaving, as well as paying for the provided service. Hence the concept of giving TIPS(To Insure Prompt

Service), if the service has been great. Simultaneously, this also sets the frames for the requirements of the role, in which the performance has certain guidelines and/or social rules. The individual ‘performing’ the role, need to be outgoing in the sense that they have to acquire knowledge of how to talk and act among different people, furthermore convince the guest to buy various of products as well as be happy, even in stressful situations. It is thus a very social job, in which the employee needs to acquire certain people-skills. The following analysis will therefore in this regard utilize one theory as the theoretical framework which we will apply to our qualitative data. Our qualitative data consist of one interview from an employee from restaurant ‘B’. Here, we are introduced to a girl, which from now on will be referred to as ‘L’. She is 23 years old and has been working at restaurant ‘B’ for almost four years. She was firstly hired as a waitress but has now been promoted to a part-time manager, which she accomplishes besides her studies. According to ‘L’ when being asked how she perceives stress, she replies that is means to have lost the overview and that you have lost the focus of what to do in which you cannot see an end to anything. She adds that it leaves her confused in a chaotic way. ‘L’ explains that she is able to identify when her co-workers feel stressed or overwhelmed by their ability to communicate. She notices that they are very short-headed and obtain a voice with heavy breathing, as well as having ‘eyes of panic’ (appendix L). In her workplace, she explains that she notices her co-workers stressed every single day, however it is not necessarily a ‘negative type of stress’, as it can also just mean that you are very busy for a few minutes. This coincides with the notions of challenge stressors and hindrance stressors. If the employee feels well-suited to fulfill the task, they are less likely to feel harm to their well-being, in which we then could argue that ‘good-stress’ such as the so-called challenge stressors are in play here (O’Driscoll and Brough, 2010). In terms of working-hours and working patterns, ‘L’ explains that having various and different time-schedules affected her well-being in regards to feeling stressed. According to the theory, no conclusive findings were accomplished, nevertheless, does it argue that excessive work-hours may have detrimental effects to well-being but neither is uniform or static, as it varies across different individuals. Consequently, through the interview with ‘L’ we were able to get one perspective. She explains that when she previously worked at

restaurant ‘B’ full time, she experienced herself feeling stressed when she left work. The different working hours resulted her into feeling that her life was very unstructured and incoherent and thus incomprehensible: “It made me stressed [...] I did not have the overview over anything else than I have to work today and tomorrow, then I will just see what else I have to do in two days. I couldn’t manage to figure it out” (appendix, L). In addition, according to her life structure, she does not feel stressed at work for the reason that she knows the upcoming agenda and the tasks she needs to fulfill. This can be recognized according to the notions of ‘job control’. When being asked if ‘L’ ever feels stressed in certain situations at work, she explains that as a manager it is merely linked to her responsibility. If a task is not fulfilled correctly or if a guest is unsatisfied and then complaints, she begins to feel stressed if it is too late to fix. This affects her job as a manager as her responsibility is to make sure that everything is in order, which stems from the concept made by Karasek (1979) in terms of work-demands. Here, ‘L’ has very little control over the given situation, in which she experiences high levels of psychological strain. Furthermore, she thus holds little locus of control (Karasek in O’Driscoll and Brough, 2010). The interview with ‘L’ then turns to the impacts of the social aspects. ‘L’ describes that when the restaurant chef is stressed, it affects her ability to do her job efficiently. Here, the idea of ‘social support’ is compatible to include. Regardless, does the theory only argue for the benefits of obtaining social support within the working environment, however, does it somehow neglect that perhaps the social aspect can operate as a hindrance rather than improve the employee’s work-relations. ‘L’ further clarifies: “if he is stressed he can easily affect me. If he is stressed I really try not to feel the same. You can easily stir up a situation, which easily can come from above” (appendix, L). Bearing this in mind, a new addition to this concept might be needed in which we suggest a compatible component could be called ‘social constraint’. As a waiter and waitress, you serve and host many different people every single day. You must, therefore, acquire a certain sense to be able to understand how to act and behave at each occasion and situation. Here, one could assume that ‘role overload’ could contribute to detrimental health if the employee is confused about the different roles he/she has to partake simultaneously.

Part conclusion According to ‘L’, having a structure in her life is an important factor in terms of her health and well-being. She feels stressed when she is not in control and does not have a long-sighted plan or idea of what she needs to do. Her role as a manager can sometimes affect her negatively, when her co-workers feel stressed and additionally if they are not fulfilling their tasks properly, she becomes nervous in regards to her responsibility where she adds: “my but is on the line here” (appendix, L). When she is controlling , both over the upcoming agenda and her environment, she does not experience a negative kind of stress as she obtains high external control as mentioned within the theory by O’Driscoll and Brough (2010): “most studies have obtained direct relationships between control levels and either reduced strain or heightened well-being” O’Driscoll and Brough (2010:66).

Analysis of restaurant ‘F’ The ‘F’ restaurant is located downtown in Copenhagen. The ‘F’ restaurant is an Argentine restaurant that specializes in meat and wine which both come from Argentina and thus they offer to their guests an Argentinian experience. The restaurant has a fireplace in the middle that makes it extremely cozy. A busy restaurant that gives work to around sixteen employees. The maximum capacity of this restaurant reaches the 120-130 guests on busy days such as Friday and Saturday. The average as the manager of the restaurant mentioned is 50 guests per day and the restaurant is open only for dinner. From the ‘F’ restaurant we interviewed three persons, the manager of the restaurant and two waiters, one male and one female. The three persons give us a different point of views in our analysis in terms of what they perceive stress from different angles such as managerial and waiter positioning but also male and female sex. We will call our three persons with the initials ‘O’, ‘A’ and ‘M’ from now on. Interview with ‘O’ Our first interviewee was ‘O’. ‘O’ is male and is the manager of the restaurant and the first person we interviewed. ‘O’ is 38 years old and seems to be a very calm person having many years of experience in the hospitality business and working around five years at restaurant ‘F’. ‘O’’s nationality is half Italian and half Spanish. The interview was thus

spoken in English. During our interview ‘O’ answered all our questions with pictorial tranquility. His voice was stable and his facial expressions calm, without any sign of surprise, dislike or even anger, signs that verify the experience of ‘O’ in this business. For ‘O’ stress is a reaction that happens at work “when we are not able to manage maybe the situation or the duties we have to do” (appendix O). For ‘O’ stress is manifested in different ways such as sweating and nervousness. Sweating is a physiological expression of stress and nervousness is psychological embedded. What is important here is that ‘O’ understands and emphasizes that “all of us have different ways to show off the stress” (appendix O). That is very important as he recognizes that the patterns of stress are based on individual differences and on the appraisal process of each individual. According to ‘O’, the stress occurs when the restaurant is very busy and the workload increases gradually, but many times also instantly, which constitutes why many staff members feel stressed. Here we see that according to ‘O’ who has much experience and knowledge, stress occurs when work overload occurs. When we asked ‘O’ how he feels about his team members being under stress, his answer was that this made him feel sad as he finds it “unfair for them to arrive to that point” (appendix O), showing how much he understands that stress(distress in this case) usually has negative outcomes for the individual. In addition, ‘O’ claims that he does his best by organizing the best possible the restaurant in terms of waiter numbers. In this restaurant the usual way to count how many waiters you need is to count one waiter every ten quests. When guests are more than this number then we have the phenomenon of employees working understaffed, which has a bigger risk of developing stress as it creates role overload, role conflict, and role ambiguity. When is happening the opposite then we have the phenomenon of overstaffing. ‘O’ describes how normal it is to have stress due to the duties you have to do sometimes and that many times you have to do many things in the same moment. In this case ‘O’ claims that he is also sweating a bit more when such situations happen, admitting that he also get stressed, mentioning though that he has 15 years of experience. This shows that according to ‘O’, the symptoms of his stress are manifested only by sweating a bit and not by nervousness which is a better and more controllable way of manifesting stress. Furthermore, ‘O’ states that “in time I understood how to control that and how to avoid that kind of situation” (appendix O). By this statement, we can argue that ‘O’ through experience learned

how to control stress and his most common way of showing and experiencing stress is through sweating. For ‘O’ the stress doesn’t only occur because of multiple tasking and workload. ‘O’ understands that there is also a private life outside work and argues that this can also affect the levels of stress during work. When it comes to the human factor of guests ‘O’ argues that is very important to the level of stress that may occur after the interaction with them. He addresses issues of food allergies the guests may have and issues of behavior. Food allergies are very important for ‘O’ as they need extra attention and if they are not attended properly they may cause serious issues for the guests depends to their allergic reaction. Guest behavior on the other hand is another important parameter for stress levels as it can produce anger that can lead to stress. When it is also combined with increased alcohol consumption can lead to really rude behaviors. ‘O’ looks a very polite persons that also gives emphasis to the characteristic of politeness in such interactions. ‘O’ describes these interactions with the quests as “real” showing how important is for his politeness. One of ‘O’’s most stressful situations at work which he describes to as is a combination of workload and guest behavior. One time here in Denmark at the restaurant he is working they held a party. At that party they had around 300 guest who attained the after food party at the bar of the restaurant. As he describes the amount of people waiting to get a drink was too big and some of the guests showed a rude behavior even if he was working hard to serve as many as possible and he was polite with all. This dual combination of workload and guest behavior seems that produced more than regular and usual amounts of stress to ‘O’. How ‘O’ is coping with stress? O claims that his way of coping with stress is being focused and doing his tasks and duties one by one, “step by step”. Because of course you cannot do more than one thing the same time and if you think of all the things you want to do then you will get more stressed. For ‘O’ organization of the restaurant is very important. Organization in terms of small briefings before service to talk about specific task during the shift or any special service for any special table. For him is very important to not do the things the last moment, as he argues that, that is what produces more stress. ‘O’ work as a coach for the rest of the employees working on the floor.

Every time the restaurant is fully booked all the staff is under stress according to ‘O’ but through the good mood and the teamwork, helping and understanding each other for ‘O’ “is a good first step in order to avoid any kind of stress” (Appendix O). ‘O’ is emphasizing very much in his ability to try to make working conditions and therefore shifts as less stressful as possible. He is the person who likes to help other people deal with stress as, as we mentioned earlier he feels sad when staff members are stressed. This behavior of ‘O’ shows that he understands and is prone to the concept of social support when stressed. In conclusion, ‘O’ argues that hospitality business and restaurants in particular are very stressful workplaces as except the workload that may occur involve another very important factor, the human contact. When the behavior of guests turn to be rude and unsatisfactory then stress is increasing. Interview with ‘A’ Our second interviewee was ‘A’. ‘A’ is a female and is from France. ‘A’ is 30 years old and has quite an experience in restaurants, cafes and bars. ‘A’ was excited about our interview and during the interview was smiley. ‘A’ is working in the restaurant around two years and as she told us before the interview she is very happy to work in ‘F’ restaurant with ‘O’ as a manager. She told us that the ‘F’ restaurant and the atmosphere in the restaurant is one of the major reasons she is still in Copenhagen. For ‘A’ stress is “a situation that you have trouble to deal with everything at the same time”. When these are a lot of things to do and you don’t have the ability to deal with them, she continues. ‘A’ is not perceiving stress as a reaction but rather as a situation. That shows us when exactly she is getting stressed. ‘A’ knows well her team members and as she claims he can understand when they are stressed by looking at how their behavior changes. According to ‘A’ her colleagues when they are stressed they stop smiling, talking and they start yelling. All these are signs of nervousness that ‘O’ described earlier. ‘A’ is claiming that restaurant business is a stressful business and emphasizes that waiters should obey to the guests and many more situations that employees should adapt. When her colleagues are stressed ‘A’ is stressed too as she claims that stress is “communicative”. One interesting point is that ‘A’ feels guilty when her colleagues are stressed because as she claims “if someone is stressed is because maybe this person needed help at some point and I didn’t see it before like the situation got until the stress” (Appendix

A). ‘A’ feels stressed sometimes not but in general, she claims that is doesn’t feel stressed “so much”. When ‘A’ is stressed though, she stops smiling and talking too much. This is the way ‘A’ goes through and experiences stress. When asked for the causes of her stress, ‘A’ mentioned primarily the guest factor. “If the customer is not happy but for a bullshit reason it’s going to stress me because is like is impossible to make this person happy”(Appendix A). Here ‘A’ is mentioning the guest who is more prone to complaints and thus the guest’s behavior. ‘A’ also gives an emphasis on the human contact when it comes to stress. Except in the beginning where ‘A’ claims that a source of stress is multitasking and workload, for her the behavior of the guests is the primarly source of her stress. When asked for her more stressful situation at work ‘A’ also recall from her memory a big party with around 200 guests. It was her first big party and she wasn’t prepared as she explained to us. For ‘A’ organization of the restaurant and also team members are of big importance and in a good level in ‘F’ restaurant. She compares her working conditions with a pyramid. She goes on to add that “if someone like fall apart it starts to everything fall apart and we have like people that they don’t stress and they are super quiet and everything and I think is kind of put like everyone on the same level of stress”. Here ‘A’ emphasizes again the communicative nature she believes stress has. When ‘A’ is stressed she copes with stress by laughing. She laughs as much as possible trying to make fun of the situation going through. When ‘A’ asked if the manager (‘O’) was a source of stress for her, her answer was negative. She admires the calmness and peacefulness of her manager and she appreciates his way of looking at things always in a positive way being “really realistic” with a difficult situation such as guests’s complaints. The manager is not yelling and he does not put high expectations that both contribute to ‘A’’s stress. In conclusion, ‘A’ claims that restaurant business is extremely stressful and that’s mostly because of the ignorance and selfishness of the guests. According to ‘A’ the guests show a shellfish behavior the busy days like Friday and Saturday when the restaurant is full and small or big delays will occur in many tables. As she argues, the guests have big expectations in their restaurant as it is also a relatively expensive restaurant. “They want to have a good time and they pay for that”(Appendix A) are the last statements of ‘A’. As she

aptly states the guests “have to be the center of the situation and being able to do that is almost impossible so is really stressful”(Appendix A).

Interview with ‘M’ Our third interviewee is a male waiter which we will call ‘M’. ‘M’ is from Moldova and is a student at Copenhagen Business School. ‘M’ is 21 years and is his first time working as a waiter he works at ‘F’ restaurant for approximately 2 years. ‘M’ was a bit stressed during our interview but he answered with pleasure to all our questions. When asked about what he thinks is stress, ‘M’ said that “stress is a feeling that we all have in our lives” (Appendix M). For ‘M’ being stressed is when we do not have answers to some questions, in other words when we have problems and we do not know how to solve these problems. ‘M’ believes that when someone is stressed “his mind is not thinking correctly, the proper way, he has a lot of thoughts and he cannot organize them”(Appendix M). Stress for ‘M’ is a destabilizer of thinking. ‘M’ also states that when someone is stress we can recognize him/her from the physical symptom of a red face. Another symptom of realizing when someone is stressed is when you see that person starts yelling and being rude to the rest of the team. The nervousness that leads to bad behavior towards the colleagues is another sign ‘M’ emphasizes. When his colleagues are stressed ‘M’ feels angry. He feels angry because as he states when someone is stressed tends to make a problem bigger instead of solving it, as when someone is stressed thinking is hard to get a particular focus. ‘M’ also feels stressed, not very often as he claims but when understaffed then the levels of stress rise for him as the workload and the role overload in terms of things that he has to do and remember rises too. If you cannot control your stress it can block you literally as he claims to us. His reaction when stressed is to try to calm himself and organize his thoughts by making small steps every time about what has to be done. ‘M’ is categorical that the causes of his stress are working understaff. We observe here that ‘M’ being a young person in terms of experience is at the situation probably ‘O’ was many years back in time when trying to handle the thoughts when stressed and to remain calm and focused. For ‘M’ the guest related stress comes in two forms. Firstly, he gets stressed when the guests complain and second when he has to present the dishes or the menu in front of a big

group or table and he may make a small mistake in the presentation. This mistake will stay in his head for some time and will not allow him to concentrate easily again. His most stressful moment was one day when there were 2 waiters and the costumers kept coming and filling the restaurant until they reach the number of 50. This understaff situation plus one table where the owner was eating with his friends and ‘M’ forgot to clean, was ‘M’’s most stressful situation. When asked about the organization of the restaurant ‘M’ was positive, saying that the restaurant is well organized and that organization is very important in order to avoid as much stress as possible. In addition, ‘M’ agrees with the communicative stress ‘A’ mentioned earlier, claiming that when his team members are stressed he gets stressed too. When stressed ‘M’ cope with it by finding a quiet place, drinking some water, organizing again his thought by what has to be done next and sometimes he smokes a cigarette which he argues also helps. In conclusion, ‘M’ finds the restaurant a stressful business for two reasons, one because of the guests and their complains and two because as he says “you never know what to expect every day”(Appendix M) emphasizing the diversity in the nature of restaurant as a business.

Part conclusion In our analysis we saw that all our three interviewees have moments when they experience symptoms of stress. Of course, each one experiences differently the symptoms and follows a different coping strategy. What is obvious is that the more experience and knowledge individual has the less stress he/she is undergoing and coping strategies are also more efficient. Here the appraisal theory that supports that knowledge is very important to the contribution of stress symptoms is valid. Furthermore we see both primary and secondary appraisal processes that take place when another major contributor of stress, workload, takes places. An organization is working well so we can argue that there are not any problems that could produce a role conflict that leads also to increased stress levels. All three individual express different symptoms of stress, namely sweating, yelling and being rude which are signs of nervousness and turning your face red. All three have different coping strategies that show their level of experience and knowledge such as stay focus, laughing, controlling your thoughts and smoking. Another interesting point is that when asked how they feel when their colleagues are stressed all answered differently saying that they feel sad, guilty and angry.

This show clearly the also the level of knowledge and experience for one more time as some who feel sad is someone who has managed to control the stress and someone who feels angry is because is getting more easily stressed. As why someone would feel guilty is because that individual has experience of stress but still not so strong and accurate in order to have more control.

Analysis of restaurant ‘O’ The ‘O’ restaurant is located downtown in a district east of the inner city of Copenhagen. It is a place with very high-quality standards and a luxury price range. The maximum capacity of this restaurant reaches the 40-50 persons in the evenings during busy days such as Fridays and Saturdays. ‘O’ is awarded as being a Michelin Star restaurant (1 Michelin Star) so demands and prices are relatively high. We have interviewed two waiters working in the ‘O’ restaurant, one male and one female. They added some significant elements to our analysis. Especially they made our attention to the importance of professional experience and understanding of the industry as a factor affecting the level of stress and sometimes even conditioning it is appearing. For privacy reasons we will call our two persons with the initials ‘C’ and ‘S’.

Interview with ‘C’ Our first interviewee was ‘C’, a young female from Italy. She is 23 years old and has a lot of work experience in restaurants and bars. She started working in ‘O’ restaurant around 3 months ago. The interview was conducted in the restaurant where ‘C’ felt safe and comfortable. As the interview took place during a break at work, therefore ‘C’ herself imposed a fast pace of conversation. She responded to the questions in a specific and determined way, going straight to the point. The only deviation from the standard procedure was the inability to ask all the questions provided in the interview plan in the right order because she sometimes responded to previous questions also those that were predicted later in the interview. ‘C’ was not too excited about the interview, but she was optimistic and sympathetic. During the conversation, she always smiled and joked, but she approached the subject seriously.

She gave the impression of being very aware of what causes her stress, her reactions as well as her coping mechanisms during the stressful situations she experienced. During the interview she looked very neat, she has no problems with personal hygiene, she was wearing her work uniform. She had visible tiredness on her face – darkness under her eyes. This may be caused by the period in which the interview took place - the pre-Christmas period is associated with extended working hours as it is an intense time for restaurants business. The form of ‘C’'s expression was direct and confident. She had no problems with answering and she did not need a long time to reflect on the questions. Her answers were usually concrete, specific but not so much detailed. ‘C’ answered the questions asked, but she did not show a willingness to broaden the statements. During the conversation, ‘C’ showed an open attitude. We asked ‘C’ to share with us her own perception of stress. It was a crucial element for us to understand what comes to her mind when she thinks about stress. She pointed out that for her stress is a lifestyle full of expectations, goals, and things to do around with a feeling of not being able to reach them all. She puts attention to powerless feeling as well as lack of control which according to her result with a state of panic. ‘C’ describes that moment in a funny but very accurate way: “panic is the thing that makes you run around like a chicken”(Appendix C). She describes stressed people as being in a rush without reason, panicking and overreacting to small things. We asked her about her way of experiencing stress at ‘O’ restaurant, but to our surprise, she claimed she doesn’t feel stress there almost at all. She pointed out that maybe when her colleagues get stressed that makes her upset but not stressed. In fact, she put attention to the important topic of hierarchy and power in the hospitality business. ‘C’ observed that stress of people under her leadership does not have an noticeable impact on her level of stress. She tries to calm them down and to give a direct task to do so they feel more organized and less panicking. There is a difference when it comes to her managers, cause she feels no right to try to make a person calm down, so she keeps quiet, double her responsibilities and try to not look like stressed as she knows that would affect others. As her statement of not being stressed in ‘O’ restaurant made us very curious she described us the reasons. In fact, the major part here was her experience and the character of the ‘O’ restaurant. ‘C’ was working in busy restaurants before, including one big, busy restaurant in the center of London. She described it as a stressful place, mostly because of fast

workflow, a lot of responsibilities and shifts length is from 16 to even 18 hours per day. Comparing, the ‘O’ restaurant she founds as here is a relaxed service, where there is enough time to do everything that should be done. The important thing was also that everybody helps each other and that makes ‘O’ restaurant less stressful place than other restaurants she has been working before. (social support) When it comes to the impact of guests behavior to ‘C’’s stress level, the only thing that can increase it is related to the idea of ‘O’ restaurant as a special place where waiters lead guest with the degustation menu as well as different wines. Their role is to keep the right tempo, explain all the dishes and wines as well as to create the right customer experience. ‘C’ perceive as stressful to her moments, when guests chose the ‘O’ restaurant for a place of specific meetings, mostly business ones. The cuisine experience is not important for them, they are focused on the conversation between each other. It that cases according to ‘C’, she feels like being in the position she cannot do her job in the right way. In the end, ‘C’ shared with us that when she feels stressed, the only coping mechanism that she uses is rethinking the situation and making an action plan. Only those are calming her down. Interview with ‘S’ Our second interviewee in ‘O’ restaurant is ‘S’, who is 41 years old Italian waiter with more than 15 years of experience in the hospitality business. He is one of the people who works the longest in the ‘O’ restaurant. The interview was conducted in a quiet, peaceful place where ‘S’ felt safe and comfortable. No disturbances resulting from the external environment were noted. The only deviation from the standard procedure was the inability to ask all the questions provided in the interview plan in the right order because the respondent sometimes responded to previous questions also those that were predicted later in the interview. ‘S’ was very excited and happy about the interview. He really enjoyed to share his feelings and story and took his time to describe it in the best possible way. This can be testified by his constant smile on the face, kindness, and interest he shown to the questions we asked him. He gave the impression of being aware of his reactions and ways of dealing with the stressful situations he is experiencing. During the examination he looked very neat, he has no problems with personal hygiene, he is well-groomed and athletic. His eyes were slightly dark under the eyes, and

tiredness was visible on his face. This may be due to the period in which the interview took place - the pre-Christmas period is intense in restaurants and is associated with extended working hours. The form of ‘S’'s expression was unhampered. He had no problems with answering, although sometimes he needed a long time to reflect on the questions asked. His answers were usually long, specific with detailed development. ‘S’ answered the questions asked, but also showed a willingness to broaden the statements with additional threads. During the conversation, ‘S’ showed an open attitude. ‘S‘defines stress in a very similar way that his colleague ‘C’ did. He thinks of it as a state of mind when there are too many targets and things to do or think about in not enough amount of time. He underlines that it is mostly connected with how he hyperbolize the situation in his mind. He is aware that he is able to reach those targets, but at the moment he feels like he is not able to do it. ‘S’ describes stressed people as overreactive to easy and simple situations, talking fast, sweating with inaccurate voice and not organized. He also pointed out that their stress has an impact on his level of stress. He does not like talking with stressed people at work, it makes him feel uncomfortable and cause stress, so depends on his relationship with colleagues sometimes he tries to help the person to calm down, but when he feels he is not able to help and it may make him stressed ‘S’ prefer to stay on the side and let the person cope with it alone. ‘S’ underlined that he does not find ‘O’ restaurant stressful for him, as he is working there for a very long time. He saw how the place is developing and changing, he knows all the mechanisms and that he can be relaxed while working there. He is aware that things in the restaurants are changing all the time (for example the menu) but he does not find it stressful. ‘S’ shared with us that there are things that make him feel stressed in ‘O’ restaurant. One of it is connected with that he is working the different country he was born. ‘S’ said that he feels stressed when he is taking care of guests which are Danish. He believes it is a matter of respect to the country and its people, that immigrants should know well their language, so he feels ashamed about his basic Danish language skills and stressed when he is not able to answer all guests questions fluently in Danish. Because of that feeling mostly he is using English at work, but that still does not make him feel better. The second thing ‘S’ is finding stressful I when he is not enough prepared with his knowledge about some wines. ‘O’ restaurant has a basement with a wide range of different

Italian wines. Sometimes guests know a lot about wine topic as that may be their passion. In that case, they ask specific questions, and sometimes ‘S’ might be not sure the answer, as he is not the sommelier. His goal is to do the best service to every single guest, when he is not able to do it he feels stressed. As ‘S’ knows the team very well, even if his colleagues are getting stressed he knows their reactions so he feels like prepared, confident and not taking their stress as his own. ‘S’ does not really cope with stress. He claimed that he got used to it and he started to like it as a motivation. He does smoke cigarettes when he is stressed but they do not help, so he is waiting for that feeling to pass naturally.

Discussion & Conclusion

In our analysis, we saw that both interviewees have moments when they experience symptoms of stress, but on a very low level when it comes to working in the ‘O’ restaurant. They are both very experienced and they underlined that as much experience and knowledge they were getting the less stress they were undergoing. The key point of the low level of stress in ‘O’ restaurant was also the team spirit as well as the character of the place. The restaurant has its calm tempo, quietness, and elegance. There is no place for rush and noise on the floor, everything has to have its good timing. This is also why there are a lot of people working, on a different level of responsibilities. That way of rota planning makes it possible for members of the team to support each other even if the restaurant’s organization is not done in a good way. Both interviewers defined stress as an overload of tasks. In that case, when there are additional people to help others the level of stress automatically drops down. ‘C’, as well as ‘S’, does not have any specific coping strategies besides of focusing, controlling their thoughts and taking actions to solve the problems. Another interesting point is to see the difference between their relation to others stress. Comparing to ‘S’, ‘C’ is very new in ‘O’ restaurant. The manager’s stress has an increase her feeling of stress. It is different when it comes to ‘S’, who knows the team really well and work for a long time already in the ’O’ restaurant. Because of that is more prepared and calm about other team members stress.

The case of ‘O’ restaurant shows how important are knowledge and experience when it comes to the feeling of stress at work as well as the length of the working period in the specific place. Beside of that the thing that has a big impact on people’s stress level are the supportive team with a great team spirit. After analyzing our interviews we got an overall overview on how individuals who work in different restaurants, both in terms of working structures and working conditions, experience stress. We talked to experienced employees as well as non-experienced. All of them seem to experience, or at least argue that they experience, stress in different ways and forms. What becomes evident to us is that stress occurs under some similar situations. The seven primary stressors outlined by O’Driscoll and Brough namely ‘work demands’, ‘working hours and patterns’, ‘job control’, ‘social support’, ‘work-family conflict’, ‘role changes’, and ‘anti-social behaviours’ all except ‘work-family conflict’, which we did not go in depth with for obvious reasons, seem to play an essential role of the stressors that occurs amongst the individuals within their working environment. Workload as well as role overload seemed to be the most common stressors in which social support was amongst the most welcomed aspects that seemingly limits strain. Guest’s behavior on the other hand, in regards to complains, played another major role in adding levels of stress to a waiter and waitress as well as to managers. One of our interviewees in ‘F’ restaurant identified guests behavior as a major stressor. This is very interesting to see how human contact, by complaining, can add to levels of stress. Another very important observation was that experience and knowledge plays a key role in coping with stress. We can argue that the more experience someone obtains, the easier it becomes for him/her to cope with stress. We do not argue that they do not experience stressful situations at all, as we believe is it impossible to avoid, however are they better at coping with stressful situations. The same happens with the knowledge, in terms of fulfilling requests from quests. Knowledge goes often together with experience. The more knowledge someone has the less he/she could put themselves in stressful situations. In this project we noticed how work-related stress occurs from many perspectives, having different restaurant organizations in play. All from a Michelin Star restaurant to restaurants that employ 50 waiters. Work-related stress is stress that occurs from our workplace and it

needs a lot of attention as we spend many hours, from six and eight to 12 and 14 hours of our everyday life. One more interesting observation is the ‘communicative’ nature that stress has. When someone is stressed in the team then is very possible more co-workers to start getting stressed too. This is unusual to a managerial level as first of all being a manager means primarily having the skills to effectively cope with stress and remain as calm as possible but also try to imagine a manager who gets stressed very easily and then gets that stressed to the rest of the team, that would lead to a disaster. Many managers though when getting stressed yell and are rude to the rest of the staff. In our case the one manager we managed to interview was an example of calmness and politeness, sweating a bit when stressed but staying focused and calm as well as supporting all the staff members and thus verifying the social support theory we went through in our theoretical part and which is very important, and of communicative nature too, in coping with stress. We saw that stress can produce anger and blurred judgment and thought. Anger comes from the inability to deal with stressors which in their turn produce blurred thought that can lead to blurred judgment. This is a vicious circle that an individual is learning to cope with usually with the time and is what adds experience to him/her. This is also very important to handle when working in a restaurant as it is a work that people and social skills are needed and you cannot express your anger and dissatisfaction to the guests. Another important aspect when it come to stress is personality traits. Personality is what differentiates us and makes more or less prone to stressors. Personality comes along with individual differences as well as appraisal processes. Appraisal is also very important when it comes to stress as it shows how, except common situations and transactions which can be stressful, another aspect that of the individual appraisal that can determine the levels of stress. All these parameters make stress a complicated phenomenon when it comes to a definition and measurements. We saw that almost all individuals agreed on the same stressors but disagreed in how they experienced stressed. For each one stress was experienced differently, by laughing, yelling, sweating, turning their face red, showing eyes of panic. Maybe stress is not simple phenomenon in terms of being multidimensional and producing various physical and psychological consequences and emotions. Maybe after all we should

follow the road that Lazarus took and also shift our focus from psychological stress to emotions if we want to understand stress better and thus learn how to cope with it. If we want to find the roots of stress we may have to dismantle all the emotions stress can produce and one by one to analyze them. This is a very interesting for a future research in the same restaurant business which is extremely stressful as it is a space of constant change and as brilliantly one of our interviewees said “you never know what to expect everyday”(Appendix M).

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