Managing and Coping with Customer Incivility:

Customer incivility is a pervasive issue in service organizations that profoundly impacts the psychological and physical well-being of employees. Frontline employees usually experience this incivility during service encounters. However, there exists a noticeable gap in research dedicated to a comprehensive understanding of customer incivility within the context of service relationships. This study provides evidence that many customers engage in uncivil behaviors, encouraged either by the management's marketing strategies or by employees striving to nurture service relationships with frequent diners. In navigating these incivilities, service employees employ various individual or collective coping tactics. A crucial factor shaping these coping strategies is the complex interplay of organizational power dynamics between the target (the employee) and the instigator (the customer). Understanding the dynamics of customer incivility underscores the importance of creating a workplace culture that empowers employees to address customer incivility constructively, safeguarding their well-being and job satisfaction.