Emotional labor is an important phenomenon of study in the field of industrial and organizational psychology as it is known to affect a myriad of organizationally-relevant outcomes such as job satisfaction and organizational commitment. However, researchers examining the process of emotional labor have yet to agree upon a single, common framework and nomenclature. As such, the field is speckled with piecemeal findings and inconsistent usage of terminologies which only serve to undermine our understanding of the phenomenon at hand. This paper attempts to reconcile discrepant usage of terminologies, considers and integrates current knowledge of emotional labor, and proposes a general framework of the process of emotional labor.