IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/woemps/v35y2021i2p386-395.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

‘It’s Like a War Zone’: Jay’s Liminal Experience of Normal and Extreme Work in a UK Supermarket during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Author

Listed:
  • Minjie Cai

    (University of Greenwich, UK)

  • Scott Tindal

    (University of Greenwich, UK)

  • Safak Tartanoglu Bennett

    (University of Greenwich, UK)

  • Jay Velu

    (University of Greenwich, UK)

Abstract

This article presents a UK supermarket worker’s experiences of work during the COVID-19 pandemic. Writing during a period of uncertainty, Jay’s narrative reveals how the sudden and constant transitions between mundanity and extremity on the shop floor evoke conflicting emotions and work intensification that disrupt and reconstruct normality. His accounts describe violent customer behaviours, absent management, a lack of clear organisational policies, and the different views of appropriate health and safety measures among colleagues. It illustrates how liminality in the workplace at a time of crisis can endanger employees whose seemingly mundane jobs become extreme.

Suggested Citation

  • Minjie Cai & Scott Tindal & Safak Tartanoglu Bennett & Jay Velu, 2021. "‘It’s Like a War Zone’: Jay’s Liminal Experience of Normal and Extreme Work in a UK Supermarket during the COVID-19 Pandemic," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 35(2), pages 386-395, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:woemps:v:35:y:2021:i:2:p:386-395
    DOI: 10.1177/0950017020966527
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0950017020966527
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0950017020966527?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jason Heyes & Sian Moore & Kirsty Newsome & Mark Tomlinson, 2018. "Living with uncertain work," Industrial Relations Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 49(5-6), pages 420-437, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Louise Nash, 2024. "There and Back Again: Neuro-Diverse Employees, Liminality and Negative Capability," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 38(1), pages 262-278, February.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Edward Yates & Ian Clark & William Rossiter, 2021. "Local economic governance strategies in the UK’s post-industrial cities and the challenges of improving local work and employment conditions," Local Economy, London South Bank University, vol. 36(2), pages 115-132, March.
    2. Mark Williams & Senhu Wang & Maria Koumenta, 2024. "Ethnicity disparities in job control in the United Kingdom," Industrial Relations Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(1), pages 33-53, January.
    3. Magnus Klofsten & Ellen MacEachen & Christian Ståhl, 2021. "New and small firms in a modern working life: how do we make entrepreneurship healthy?," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 57(2), pages 755-763, August.
    4. Beate Elstad & Erik Døving & Dag Jansson, 2022. "Precariousness during an ongoing crisis. Cultural workers and the corona pandemic," Industrial Relations Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 53(5), pages 466-483, September.
    5. Pedro Mendonça, 2020. "Trade union responses to precarious employment: the role of power resources in defending precarious flight attendants at Ryanair," Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research, , vol. 26(4), pages 431-445, November.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:woemps:v:35:y:2021:i:2:p:386-395. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.britsoc.co.uk/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.