You fold the robes to perfection! A story from doing working participant observation

Abstract

This note tells a story of working participant observation. It shares a narrative of how working as a housekeeper, as part of a project about dignity and decent work, opened up the researchers to stories beyond the work tasks. The note weaves a tale around one particular worker, and highlights how as researchers, being embedded, and embodied within their research allowed for insights and reflections that a “common” interview would not have gained. It highlighted the positives and tensions of being “in between” an insider and an outsider as a researcher. The note concludes with a reminder or perhaps a caution that we are all, bodies, minds, our “selves,” part of the research process and the necessity to be reflexive, thoughtful, and engaged with our research remains essential as we look to expand how we gain knowledge into (service) work and employment.

Note

This is the story of a day in a laundry room that altered our way of thinking about qualitative methods and the value of participation. It is a story of the spaces in between. It is a snapshot of a day at work as a geographer, conducting research through participant observation in a hotel. To set the scene, we need to start by giving you a bit of background as to why one of us was in the laundry room that day and why she did not need to even ask a question to get a story told to her that would adjust our way of thinking as qualitative researchers who are used to asking questions all of the time.

But why tell a story about a conversation in a laundry room? As Latham (2020) suggests, “thinking about method” very rarely makes its way into academic journals. Instead of exploring the “nitty-gritty of research” (Latham, 2020: 666) that focuses on the finely grained nuances of a research encounter, we often collapse the complexity of the researcher-participant interaction into a neat and tidy quote that gets to the core of our argument (Bissell, 2023). Our goal in this research note is not to fundamentally alter how we think of a particular method or offer innovative new ways of undertaking participant observation. Rather, through one particular encounter, we want to illustrate the necessity of recognizing the small moments within research. Those moments that shift our view of our research, connect us to our participants in unexpected ways or offer alternative understandings of something we perhaps took for granted. The story outlined here is about getting us, as researchers, to recognize the methodological mediocrity that may creep into how we “do” and present our research and asks that we re-think, reflect and are reflexive on the what, the who and the how of our research (Palaganas et al., 2017). As Bissell (2023: 192) suggests, we are increasingly “mindful that people are complex and incoherent,” but how do we adjust our thinking and writing to allow the messiness of research to shine through?

We are a group of three researchers in human geography and tourism studies, conducting empirical research in a project that focusses on decency and dignity in hotel housekeeping. The main method we are using is working participant observation (after McMorran, 2012), in which we, as researchers, are introduced to the work of housekeeping by working with staff for a few weeks at five hotels, each of us at different hotels. This approach of “working with” housekeepers takes an embodied labor perspective where we study the bodies at work by also being those bodies and gives us insights into specific, embodied daily practices and understandings of housekeeping work (cf. McMorran, 2012). Our work can be seen as a contribution to the call for an expansion of ethnographic research into the contemporary nature of work and employment, where ethnographic sensibilities and sensitivities are especially relevant in service-based organizations (Brennan et al., 2007: 396).

Through understanding knowledge production as something embodied, researchers are part of and must engage with the social world that is being studied (Haraway, 2016). Hence, we see the method of working participant observation as a way for researchers to be bodily embedded in the practices of the study object, where the concept of embodiment enables us to see the working body as shaped by different situated (Haraway, 1991), performative (Butler, 1990), organizational, and geographical practices (McDowell, 2018). We use the framework of embodiment in this work to situate ourselves as researchers in the context of the embodied labor that we study through the method of working participant observation as defined by McMorran (2012).

Our research work is not “undercover.” The employer and the employees know why we are there, that the project has been approved by the (Swedish) National Ethical Review Authority, and they all agreed to be part of the project. Our hope with this project is that, by using our own bodies as a research instrument, we can gain insights into the everyday work of housekeepers and understand more about their work than what we could obtain from interviews alone. Hence, through one specific encounter, we tell a story of how it was possible to reach a depth of knowledge that would never have been accessible if we had only talked about work with a housekeeper.

The story we tell takes place at one of the hotels where we were working. The housekeeping unit at this hotel is small and only consists of a handful of contracted cleaners employed directly by the hotel. The researcher was assigned to work with three of the contracted housekeepers as well as working with an hourly employed member of the housekeeping staff. The researcher was introduced to the work in the same way as a new employee would be. She followed what they did while at work and helped with the work duties that were on the housekeeping to-do list. This gave insight into the work tasks, but also gave a lot of time to observe their work, ask questions, and make small talk with the hotel staff, especially those whom she cleaned the rooms with. In this hotel, it takes about 20–30 min to clean each room, so you have a good amount of time to talk in the different rooms throughout the day. You not only have time to talk and ask questions when making the bed or dusting, but also when walking between rooms and areas of the hotel, picking things up from storage units, doing other duties, and taking lunch breaks. Whilst this story pertains to one researcher and one participant, we write as a group, partly as this story resonates with similar experiences of the other two researchers, partly as we coalesce other stories into elements of this story to ensure anonymity, and partly to embrace a subtle and implicit feministic epistemological and ontological outlook that encompasses the research project.

During the first day at this specific hotel, the researcher worked with a man in his twenties, let us call him Ali. He said that he was not much of a talker so he did not think that he could contribute much to our research. Ali told the researcher that he is used to being quiet and not saying much. He ended up talking about a lot of things during that first day. He spoke about work, about his current life and showed the researcher where he lived, as it was possible to see his housing (which was provided by the hotel) from some of the rooms at the hotel. During lunch, he introduced the researcher to the routine of getting a staff meal from the kitchen; they sat down together with various supervisors and managers and back-office staff from the hotel who were eating in the public dining area of the restaurant. After eating, he served everyone coffee: the researcher said thanks and the others just looked surprised over the coffee they were served and did not say anything to him, they just continued with their conversations. He then left without a word. The researcher had to ask the others what time it was and how long they were allowed for lunch break. It turned out that she was late, he had left to continue working and left her chatting with “the others.” She rushed off and found him in one of the rooms on their list. He said he thought she wanted to have a chat with the others and did not want to interrupt when he left; he wanted to get on with work rather than resting after the meal. The researcher got the hint that he was not a chatty person. They continued to clean rooms together, making small talk; laughing about her mistakes and he told amusing stories about guests at the hotel. By the end of the first day, they both said that they hoped to work together again during the week. Luckily, they did.

During the second day, the researcher cleaned one of the suites together with a woman of a similar age. The room was as large as a small apartment, with a bathroom almost the size of a bedroom. A suite that size takes more than 30 min to clean, so the woman she was assigned to clean with had time to talk a lot. They talked about her dog and the researcher told her about hers. They took turns dusting the room and making the beds and, as they finished cleaning the room, the housekeeper put the bathrobes at the foot of the beds. The housekeeper suddenly made a comment about the robes, which the researcher knew had been washed and folded by other housekeepers the day before. She said that one of her colleagues folds the robes in such a perfect way. “He uses a technique that is outstanding, he folds them to perfection. I cannot understand how he does it,” she said to the researcher while she moved them just slightly to be at right angles to each other. The robes were certainly folded nicely. They looked perfect!

The colleague she was talking about was Ali, the guy the researcher had worked with the day before. He worked quickly and was efficient, but she had not seen him as someone working in the laundry area. They had not ended up there during their workday together; but had just passed by and seen others working there even as they rushed off to clean their assigned rooms. She moved away from the thought of the robes and continued to do the dusting. They finished up the room and got ready to leave for the next room to be cleaned. They ticked the suite as “ready for check-in” in the system, ready for new guests to unfold and use the robes. The next day some of the housekeepers would take these robes back, dirty, to the laundry area for cleaning and folding again, getting them ready to be put back into a room to be used.

The workdays went by quickly. There were so many new work tasks that the researcher had to learn and insights to remember for the researcher's notetaking and discussions with her fellow researchers. The comment about the robes was put aside in the many notes and discussions that occurred after each working participant observation “shift.”

Towards the end of the week, the researcher was again assigned to work with Ali. They worked fast that day, and she managed to help, rather than slow him down. Ali had shown the first day that he was hard working. When they worked together this second time, the researcher did the beds and Ali cleaned the bathroom and dusted in one room, and in the next room they swapped the tasks around. He trusted her ability to clean and make beds and they quickly moved through the list of assigned rooms to clean. He said that they were a good team and he liked working with her. She felt like they had connected.

As Ali and our fellow researcher had cleaned quickly on their second day of working together, they ended up taking care of the laundry, a duty that was to be done when waiting for rooms to be ready to be cleaned, or in any spare time at the end of the workday. The laundry space was included in the area where housekeeping staff had their main storage unit. Washing was done in a small room, drying next door, and folding in an overcrowded room with the storage of linen. Towels took up two walls, extra mattresses, pillows, and duvets were piled along another wall. A long table was set up for folding the “special” laundry, which was washed at the hotel. The bed linen and bath towels were sent to a contractor for washing. Small hand towels for public toilets, kitchen clothing, and bath robes were washed at the hotel. The researcher had seen other housekeepers standing by the table folding the small hand towels and dust cloths while they were looking out the window, listening to a TV show or podcast on their mobile phones or chatting with each other if there was more than one housekeeper there at the same time.

Ali and the researcher emptied the dryer with robes into a huge trolley and moved it to the storage room. Ali placed the trolley on the floor next to the table, the robes ready for folding. The researcher was standing in the doorway, leaning on the doorframe to both keep out of the way and rest her body at the same time. Ali took one of the washed and dried robes from the messy pile, placed it on the table, quickly unfolded it to lay it flat, and then folded it with such a speed that she did not have a chance to understand how it was done. It brought to mind origami – when you fold a piece of paper and it suddenly is something other than just a piece of paper, something transformed, like a beautiful swan. Suddenly, a perfectly folded robe was in front of them. Without thinking, she said: “You do fold these robes perfectly.” He looked at her, squinted his eyes, and turned around to pick up another unfolded robe and put it on the table. Then he started to talk. This is the start of what turned out to be one of the most meaningful and poignant moments.

While folding the second robe, he said that he had worked in the fashion and textile industry for five years. The second robe was now folded, and the third one was up on the table. He said he had learned how to work with textiles and knew how to do it quickly and in a way that looked nice.

The researcher did some quick math and figured that she must have misunderstood something. She knew that he came alone to Sweden as a refugee in 2016 and started upper secondary school, which would mean that he must be around 23 now. She asked him when he had had time to work with fashion. He looked up at the ceiling, counted the years, and replied, “I did it from the ages of eight to 13, when I was a refugee in Iran.” He told her, without prompting, that he sewed about 200 dresses per week, to be shipped away and sold in the Western world. Dresses like the ones that “you” (he said, looking at the researcher) can buy at those cheap stores at the mall. However, he told her, the clothes he sewed were not shipped to Sweden. He probably said this to release the researcher from feelings of guilt, that she would not have worn the dresses he had made. She felt like he had seen that thought flashing through her mind. He went on to say that after working seven days a week in the clothing industry, he moved on to sewing custom-made car interiors, such as seats and other textile parts for luxury brands. Then he fled to Sweden, leaving his father and little brother behind.

He did not stop talking. For more than half an hour he was folding robes, and she was listening, asking a few questions to make sure she understood, but mostly nodding, looking him in the eyes when he looked up, giving him the opportunity to tell the story he wanted to tell. The researcher was there to listen, and to try and understand. To take his story with her, to use it to inform others. He told her the story of his life.

He told her about how he ended up in Sweden and at this particular hotel. How he and his newfound friends, who were also unaccompanied young refugee boys, got mistreated in their foster family. How he, after the mistreatment was discovered, had to be moved around to other cities in Sweden, moved around in a country that he did not know. How he managed to get back to the place where his friends still lived and where he could stay thanks to a new foster family that he now adores. How he could continue school up until graduation. He told me how much this place means to him. This was the place he had first come to, the place that he got forced away from and yet the place he came back to. His home in Sweden. Now he needs to keep working to show that he is worthy of permanent residency in Sweden. If he is unsuccessful in the application that he recently submitted, he will need to leave Sweden for good by the end of the year.

The researcher began to understand why Ali was back in this small town, why he was running, why he did all the extra work, why he did not want to leave uncompleted work for the following day, why he had come back to this hotel, the hotel that was his first workplace from a few years ago. She did not have to ask questions; the answers were built into that conversation in the laundry room and the glimpse of his life that he told her about on their first day working together now made much more sense. She had another opportunity to work with Ali at a later stage. They continued to talk about his background, about his struggle with getting permanent residency in Sweden, his fear of having to leave Sweden if his second application to the migration authority was rejected and how time was running out. He also talked about how his work ethic came from his childhood. He was used to working hard as he had learned that work is tough and working quickly is the only way to get respect.

Back in the laundry room that day, Ali also told the researcher about his dreams. He wants to become an architect or designer. He is a trained cabinetmaker from upper secondary school. She was guessing that no one at the hotel knew this. What they see and know is a hard-working and fast-working housekeeper who wants to be on his own but would help any of his colleagues if they needed it. That is potentially also the only version that we, as researchers, would have heard about (from Ali and from his colleagues) if we had only interviewed him about his work, or interviewed management about the staff, or if we have only worked with the chattier staff. On the other days at the hotel, the researcher worked with other housekeepers who were more talkative. They all asked her if he (Ali) had even talked to the researcher. They said he is a quiet guy who keeps to himself. The researcher told them that he did talk, but she never told them what he said. She wondered if they had ever tried to ask him anything about his life, anything other than questions about the actual work. If they had ever sat down in the lunchroom where he normally sits with his compatriots, a small room by the kitchen, and not out in the dining area where the rest of the staff eats together.

By working together with different housekeepers, by using the method of working participant observation, the researcher could talk with—or perhaps listen to—this young man and others, in a way that we would not have been able to with more “common” qualitative methods. She got to know bits of the person behind the co-worker during the days of working together. She was just like him while working as a housekeeper. They were on the same page there and then. He could talk to her in a way that we would never have gotten close to if we had talked with each other during an interview about dignity and decency in housekeeping. With the method of working participant observations, she was not participating as an insider who had the knowledge and skills, nor was she an outsider who only observed what others were doing. We do the same as them, working with them, and they are the ones who teach us, whom we are learning from. The researcher gets embedded in the housekeeping unit, at least to some extent. She becomes a colleague who listens, at the same time as she is allowed to ask questions, and this is what gives the research the depth and richness. And this is only achieved through trust, and a willingness to get our hands dirty (McMorran, 2012; Nimri et al., 2020).

We share this story as it offers food for thought about the critical elements of being a stranger trying to get into the field as a geographer and about how stories shift and change our perspectives, our feelings, and our understandings. The researcher turned out to be “in the space between” an insider and an outsider (Dwyer and Buckle, 2009), a space in which we need to navigate, a space which we are still navigating. This is the space in which our bodies need to stop “just” doing the demanding work of a housekeeper; when our minds also need to continually reflect on the situations in which we find ourselves. It is also a space where we feel the need to go back, to re-experience and reiterate what happened to our bodies and minds when being in the field. By being embedded and embodied in the work of housekeeping, our bodies, minds, and our “selves,” are included in the research in ways that they never would have been if we had “only” conducting the commonly used interviews in geographical qualitative research (Dowling et al., 2016: 680).

Yet perhaps what this story illustrates the most is the necessity for reflexivity (Palaganas et al. 2017). We are there “pretending” to be part of their group, not only as workers but as embodied researchers. As geographers, we are interested in the workers’ mobility, use of space, and relation to place. We ask questions about the workers’ life outside work as it is considered relevant for understanding how they perceive and perform work, and how work and non-work life intersect. Trying to gain this understanding led to the story of Ali's life. He knew that the researcher was interested and that she would listen. She had her insider position to thank for this, as she had been open about herself and her (family) life and so he told her about his life without her having to ask him about it. Yet, the researcher also had to navigate out from the insider role to prevent herself from being or becoming too emotionally affected. She needed to step out to be able to reflect. However, the question remains whether she can ever be an outsider again. We (perhaps purposely) straddle the insider/outsider role, navigating spaces in between where we as researchers can feel a myriad of emotions including guilt (DeLuca and Maddox, 2016).

This story is written from the spaces in between in an attempt to think about methods from a more nuanced perspective. “Do you want to try, I’ll show you?” he said, offering to show the researcher how he folded the robes. He helped his co-worker step by step, she could not fold the robes anywhere near as well as he did, and she is sure she never will. Her attempts echo how we try to take our participant's stories and lives and represent them to a very different audience. Whilst her robes are the ugly duckling, his are the beautiful swan.