Abstract
The restaurant industry boasts one of the youngest, fastest growing workforces in the country. Despite the unique nature of restaurant work and size of the industry’s workforce, it has remained an underexplored context within organizational literature. This paper seeks to open a scholarly investigation into the identity of the restaurant worker. Drawing upon identity literature that focuses on identity construction, identity performance, and discursive analysis, interviews were conducted with 19 current and former restaurant employees to examine the ways in which workers enacted idealized identities. A qualitative analysis revealed how individuals enacted values of flexibility, empathy, composure, and teamwork, which contributed to positive professional identities. Moreover, these identities served as resistance to the stigmas that portray restaurant work as “dirty,” and not “real” work. Findings reveal the ways in which service workers draw from multiple discourses to craft positive identities and generate meaning in less-than meaningful work. This study extends identity literature to an underexplored context and suggests theoretical and practical implications for reframing how service work is generally perceived.