POETRY

The Bank Manager

Time and Ubuntu in Emotion Work

9am The bank doors open She walks to her office and climbs onto the time treadmill Prepares her spirit for the cyclonic day A knock on the door This first interruption rains on her mind She wants to say ‘Leave me alone to get on with my job’ But she says aloud, ‘Can I help?’ Smiles with her mouth and tells her eyes to do the same But it’s hard and will take a bit of practice through the day God loves a trier The digital clock starts On and on across the morning it ticks silently Then, yeah!, it’s lunchtime and she steps out of the storm

1.30pm All too short the break The people blizzard begins again She pulls her jacket around her beautiful body What’s that word again, the one that makes you feel you should be compassionate? Yes, Ubuntu. She tries hard, But it’s not easy to exude Ubuntu during a tsunami More knocks on the door To cope, she sends her mind on safari but the bushfires of time continue to burn

5.00pm Relief, Time is sucked out like a tornado and spat out into the street Her customers trickle away Her people close up the tills She hears someone say, ‘This job would be great if wasn’t for the customers’. Laughter She climbs off the treadmill seat Picks up her coat and bag And walks out into the sunshine Eyes and mouth smiling.

I once worked in the human resourcing function of a large UK engineering company. The phone never seemed to stop. In between answering that and seeing to people at the door of the office I hardly had time to breathe. By the end of the day my face was cracking at the sheer effort of smiling. Emotion work is a cross many people have to bear, day in, day out.

Emotion work is a concept constructed by Arlie Hochschild in the 1970s. It relates to “inducing or inhibiting feelings so as to render them ‘appropriate’ to a situation.” It is a form of emotional management; a conscious effort to manage one’s emotions in order to maintain and fulfill social relationships.

Nappy.co is a brilliant website featuring ‘Beautiful, high-res photos of black and brown people.’ This picture stuck in my mind long after I had looked at the pretty impressive stock of people on this site. The smiling woman struck me as a strong person who would draw people to her to solve their problems for them. I got to wondering what she did for a living. I don’t know if she’s a bank manager or not. It doesn’t really matter, does it? She’s a beautiful girl and generated the idea for this poem. Thank you, whoever you are.Oh.. and I love her pearls. Pearls in jewellery are a symbol of grace. I think this woman has lots of grace, don’t you?

Ubuntu can best be described as an African philosophy that places emphasis on ‘being self through others’. It is a form of humanism which can be expressed in the phrases ‘I am because of who we all are’ and ubuntu ngumuntu ngabantu in the Zulu language.