Workplace incivility in restaurants: Who’s the real victim? Employee deviance and customer reciprocity

This study expands upon previous literature that focused on examining the impact of managers’ incivility towards their employees and the effects on employee behavior and attitudes, as well as customers’ perceptions and behavior intentions following workplace incivility from the maltreated employees. Using mixed-methods of sequential incident techniques and a scenario-based experiment, the study found that when customers received a good service from the employee who was maltreated by his/her supervisors, customers are more likely to revisit the restaurant and tend to provide more tips to the employee compared to customers who received a bad service from the employee. Also, employees who try to continuously provide a good service to customers regardless of their mistreatment from the manager, trigger customers’ moral unease, thus lead them to give more tips.