Uma vida para além do ponto: implicações da jornada de trabalho na organização temporal e vivências cotidianas dos trabalhadores de restaurantes de Fortaleza

Abstract

The present research discusses the implications of working hours in the temporal organization and daily experiences of professionals who work in restaurants. The study of temporality and its association with "daily life" is inscribed on a socio-economic context marked by precarization and flexibilization of labor ties: the restoration. Despite being one of the segments of the economy with higher growth in recent years and with strong capacity to generate jobs, professionals still have low education levels and compensation below average compared to other service activities. The research is characterized as qualitative and was conducted through semi-structured interviews with ten professionals (three managers and seven employees, including waiters, kitchen helpers and cook) from the group of restaurants where the researcher worked between 2006 and 2009. Data analysis was based on the methodology proposed by Alonso (1998) called Sociological Analysis of Discourse. Based on this methodology, three categories of analysis were created, namely: Work, Temporal Organization and Daily Experiences. The discourses have highlighted that working hours in restaurants represents a dominant temporality on workers´ life, submitting other social times to its configuration. The time to be with the family, to study, to rest and “to do nothing" depends on the time determined by the job, especially among night workers. So, either by fatigue or by the atypical time one finishes work, the possibility of workers´ daily experiences show to be limited, which directly interferes in the social relations.