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"Why do Americans pour so much of their trust into work, despite prevalent job insecurity, onerous task burdens, and demanding schedules? While surveys repeatedly find that levels of trust in experts, government, and police are declining, they continue to report high levels of trust at work. An enduring mystery for contemporary work scholars is why Americans feel they owe so much to their employers, who apparently owe so little to them. An intrepid ethnographer, Sarah Mosseri takes us with her to solve that mystery, as she immerses herself for months in different workplaces to crack the code on the enigma of enduring trust among American workers. Aided by a comparison case of ride-hail workers, Mosseri uses her compelling cases to document how trust is not one thing but many, and how workers adjust its meaning to suit their needs as they navigate the tricky interpersonal dynamics of high-pressure, precarious workplaces. Replete with surprising stories of trust that reveal its local meanings—from 'Sunday brunch level' solidarity to compulsory post-work karaoke—Trust Fall deftly chronicles how firms enlist workers’ hearts. Readers are treated to an abundance of unique and powerful concepts that Mosseri offers to capture the nuance of trust at work—among these, the humanity bubbles that create zones of trust amidst a context of business rationality, the morality of the fallen that celebrates the dysfunction that ties people together, and the maverick managers, whose privilege buys them forgiveness for harsh words or ineptitude. With a sympathetic but unerring eye, Mosseri reveals the compromises that workers make as they negotiate complex and demanding settings, and the steep price they pay for their cruel optimism. Mosseri shows how trust—for many a wholly benevolent idea—can actually serve to blind workers to their own interests, acting as an invisible lubricant for the ruthless American economic engine. Armed with the clarifying insights from Trust Fall, including a comprehensive concluding chapter with many specific proposals for managers, policymakers, and the wider public, readers are better prepared to take on the tasks of addressing systemic inequalities in the workplace and forging collective solutions to ground trust in equitable relations and a robust social infrastructure. Mosseri has delivered a revelatory guide—sometimes humorous, always trenchant—to the subtle, contradictory, and potent force that is trust in the workplace."—Allison Pugh, Professor of Sociology, Johns Hopkins University
"A refreshing, novel take on the hidden dynamics that make contemporary work so difficult to endure. Trust Fall ranks among the best ethnographic accounts of how employers of all kinds manipulate intimacy on the job."—Melissa Gregg, Professor of Digital Futures, Bristol Digital Futures Institute and University of Bristol Business School
"A remarkable achievement, and unlike any other workplace book I've encountered, Trust Fall made me understand why I've always loathed the idea of a workplace family, and how workplace relationships have become such a commonplace (and utterly unreliable) replacement for job protections and our tattered social safety net. If you've felt manipulated, let down, or gross about ideas of loyalty or family in the workplace but could never quite explain why, this book will both give you language for that discomfort and connect the dots to our larger feelings of precarity and burnout. A decoder ring of a book."—Anne Helen Petersen, author of the Culture Study newsletter