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Summary
Research on work aggression or anger has typically focused on supervisors and co-workers as the instigators of aggression; however, aggressive customers are also likely and may have unique consequences for the employee. We explore this phenomenon with a sample of 198 call center employees at two work sites. The employees reported that customer verbal aggression occurred 10 times a day, on average, though this varied by race and negative affectivity. Using LISREL, our data indicated that both the frequency and stress appraisal of customer aggression positively related to emotional exhaustion, and this burnout dimension mediated the relationship of stress appraisal with absences. Stress appraisal also influenced employees' emotion regulation strategies with their most recent hostile caller. Employees who felt more threatened by customer aggression used surface acting or vented emotions, while those who were less threatened used deep acting. Job autonomy helped explain who found these events more stressful, and implications of these results are discussed. Copyright#2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Introduction
According to recent researchers and the popular press, people are less able to treat each other in a courteous and respectful way at work (Andersson & Pearson, 1999; Daw, 2001; Grimsley, 1998; Marks, 1996). In the study of this phenomenon, work behaviors such as yelling, rudeness, and threats have been studied under multiple labels, including interactional injustice (Bies & Moag, 1986), work aggression (LeBlanc & Kelloway, 2002), workplace bullying (Leyman, 1996), incivility (Andersson & Pearson, 1999), and interpersonal conflict (Spector & Jex, 1998). In general, these behaviors are related to deleterious work reactions such as stress and health problems, retaliatory behaviors, and turnover, making it a critical topic for study.
The theory, research, and scale development on these forms of work aggression has generally focused on intra-organizational members as the source and targets of these behaviors (e.g., Andersson & Pearson, 1999; Donovan, Drasgow, & Munson, 1998; Frone, 2000; Spector & Jex, 1998). A missing piece from the existing literature is the recognition that such antisocial behaviors may come from the very people the organization is trying to help, namely, the customers. Furthermore, researchers have been more likely to study rare violent episodes from ex-employees or the public (e.g., Barling, Rogers, & Kelloway, 2001) than the effects of the more common...