Meaningful work in a grocery store: a phenomenological sensemaking approach to job crafting among store workers

Abstract

What constitutes meaningful work in contexts associated with routines and low-skill work, such as grocery stores? And how do workers contribute to making their work meaningful in such contexts? We expand the conception of meaningful work beyond meaning in terms of significance found in the job crafting literature. Employing a phenomenological sensemaking perspective on data material combining participatory observations in a grocery store and in-depth interviews with employees, we find that store workers continuously engage in work aimed at maintaining the technical material, and social order of the store, that is ongoingly ‘micro-disturbed’ by customers who, e.g., pick groceries from shelves, ask for assistance and sometimes shoplift. Sensitized by this phenomenological sensemaking perspective, we also demonstrate how this ‘maintenance work’ manifests as cognitive and behavioral (practical) crafting and clarify their intertwined nature, a previously unresolved conceptual puzzle in the job crafting literature.