A break room as spatial and material order for interaction

This research aims to understand break rooms through the lens of everyday interaction as places where practices are both created and resisted. Emotion work present in all interaction between people is connected to power relations and cultural meanings that are central to people’s investment in their place of work and each other. The study asks how break rooms as spaces are integral to interaction and emotion work and in what kinds of performances and interactions, they invite people. The focus is on how break rooms shape interaction and what the significance of break rooms is for people. The data consist of data collected in workplaces in the 1980s, 1990s and the 2010s. The emphasis of the analysis is in the data gathered in the 2010s. The paper suggests that resistance, critical attitude, emotional coping and developing certain kinds of service skills are key to break room interaction.