Stress on Frontline Employees from Customer Aggression in the Restaurant Industry: The Moderating Effect of Empowerment

Abstract

In service industries such as restaurants, abusive customer (jay-customer) behaviors may evoke emotional exhaustion and burnout in frontline employees, threatening job satisfaction as well as sustainable management in the hospitality industry. Therefore, there is a need to identify whether (and to what degree) such customer behaviors stress frontline employees enough to affect their mental health, which may lead to employee turnover. To understand jay-customer behaviors in a restaurant setting, this study investigated the factors of jay-customer behaviors that induce job stress and decrease job satisfaction. Additionally, the moderating effect of empowerment was tested to see whether employee empowerment decreases the stress caused by jay-customer behaviors. Data collected from 302 restaurant employees from several cities in South Korea were analyzed using exploratory factor analysis and structural equation modeling. The study results demonstrate that three types of jay-customer behaviors (verbal abuse, physical abuse, and sexual harassment) are directly related to frontline employees’ job stress, which in turn, reduces job satisfaction. A moderating effect of empowerment on the relationship between verbal abuse and job stress is found. The results of this study suggest a conceptual model for understanding the process in which jay-customers negatively influence the frontline employees, threatening employee well-being, and they provide valuable implications for the restaurant industry, which can help develop strategies to improve employee welfare and provide better customer management.

Creating and Sustaining Service Industry Relationships and Families: Theorizing How Personal Workplace Relationships Both Build Community and Perpetuate Organizational Violence

“…Our contribution to dark side and inappropriate communication frames is to connect to organizational violence [ 44 ] to theorize how both relationships and organizational structures can sustain harassment, bullying, and other forms of violence at work. In particular, our research adds to ongoing scholarship on how violence is normalized in certain occupations [ 49 , 50 , 51 ], showcasing a need for continued research at an occupational level. We suggest future scholarship to theorize occupational violence, which we conceptualize as how members of specific occupations create, maintain, or challenge communication practices and norms that structure the normativity of violence at work.…”

“…Icenogle et al’s [ 50 ] discovery further illustrates the need for additional research on sexual harassment within non-white-collar occupations, such as our own. Bi et al [ 51 ] (p. 11) specifically examined organizational violence of service industry customers in South Korea, and their survey results revealed that restaurant employees faced verbal and physical abuse and sexual harassment by customers. Such repeated abuse by customers led to burnout and health impacts [ 51 ] (p. 12).…”

“…Bi et al [ 51 ] (p. 11) specifically examined organizational violence of service industry customers in South Korea, and their survey results revealed that restaurant employees faced verbal and physical abuse and sexual harassment by customers. Such repeated abuse by customers led to burnout and health impacts [ 51 ] (p. 12).…”

“…Kim and Leach’s [ 53 ] (p. 511) article noted how cultivating justice among managers and employees could assuage the burnout customer service workers face as tied to their expected emotional labor in response to unjust communication. Our research thus uniquely interconnects areas of organizational violence and emotional labor in PWRs in customer service work among employees and managers, rather than focusing on customers’ inappropriate communication and perpetuating organizational violence, as showcased by current scholarship [ 30 , 51 , 53 ].…”

Dysfunctional Customer Behavior, Employee Service Sabotage, and Sustainability: Can Social Support Make a Difference?

“…The deviant behavior of these customers disrupts service encounters, decreases other customers' overall service satisfaction [8,9], and damages the service companies' financial performance [10], which is called dysfunctional customer behavior [11]. Previous service management research has found that such dysfunctional customer behavior adversely affects service employees, generating psychological stress, damaging their self-esteem, and making the service employees engage in counterproductive behaviors [6,12,13]. On the other hand, dysfunctional customer behavior in a service setting is considered a dirty little secret despite the number of known issues.…”