Bartending makes for an interesting case study in that it brings together research on emotional labor and tipped front-line service jobs, as well as the contemporary increase in precarity in work and precarity in life. This project explores the material and identity processes of bartending, examining how a precarious job with high expectations of emotional labor in-turn affects the occupational and personal identities of those employed in the industry. Overall three overarching themes were identified: (1) When wages are outsourced to customers via tipping systems workers are exposed to particularly high emotional demands, rendering bartending a unique form of quid pro quo emotional labor. (2) Bartenders exist in a “default career” mode of employment that is stigmatized for being low-status low-skilled labor. (3) Performing emotional labor and managing stigma creates a divergence between bartender’s personal and occupational identities resulting in constant identity work on and off the job. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2017. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection