Customer abuse of frontline service workers is widespread. Yet despite growing recognition of this problem, we know very little about the role that service companies play in potentially enabling customers’ abusive behaviors. This phenomenon deserves attention because one of the recent trends in service management is giving customers a direct role in managing and evaluating workers’ performance. In this article, the author explores how granting customers direct access to organizational power over workers, what the author develops conceptually as “laundering control through customers,” explains how customer abuse emerges. Drawing on a sample of 486 Uber and Lyft drivers, the author examines how the companies’ use of the “five-star” evaluation system enables customers to engage in a range of different forms of abuse and how workers resist this configuration of control. This study contributes to the customer triangle literature by bringing in evidence from the gig economy and uncovers new implications for the “dark side” of customer service work.

客户滥用一线服务人员的情况很普遍。然而，尽管人们越来越认识到这个问题，但我们对服务公司在潜在地使客户的虐待行为中所扮演的角色知之甚少。这种现象值得关注，因为服务管理的最新趋势之一是在管理和评估员工绩效方面给客户直接的作用。在本文中，作者探讨了如何授予客户对员工的组织权力的直接访问权，作者在概念上发展为“通过客户进行洗钱控制”，解释了客户滥用的产生方式。以486个Uber和Lyft驱动程序为样本，作者研究了公司如何使用“五星级”评估系统使客户参与各种形式的滥用行为，以及工人如何抵制这种控制方式。这项研究通过提供零工经济的证据为客户三角文献做出了贡献，并揭示了对客户服务工作“阴暗面”的新含义。