Purpose

The issue of customer mistreatment in food and retail sectors has come under the spotlight during the COVID-19 crisis. The purpose of this paper is to examine the problem in the COVID-19 pandemic context and study its implications for employee counterproductive behavior in the workplace. Specifically, this study aims to investigate the relationship between customer mistreatment and employee counterproductive behavior by considering the mediating role of cognitive rumination and moderating role of servant leadership at coffee cafés that operated during the COVID-19 smart lockdown period.

Design/methodology/approach

Structured questionnaires were distributed to 479 frontline staff working at cafés and coffee shops located in two large cities of Pakistan. The questionnaire data were analyzed by using bootstrapped regression procedures to determine how the investigated variables influenced counterproductive work behavior during the pandemic.

Findings

The findings revealed a positive influence of customer mistreatment on counterproductive work behavior both directly as well as indirectly in the presence of employee rumination as a mediator. Furthermore, the presence of servant leadership at cafés and coffee shops was found to moderate the impact of customer mistreatment during the pandemic.

Originality/value

The study offers a novel insight into the relationships between mistreatment by customers, counterproductive work behavior, employee rumination and servant leadership in the COVID-19 pandemic context, hitherto unexplored.

中文翻译：

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COVID-19情境研究，研究顾客在咖啡店的虐待和适得其反的工作行为

目的

在COVID-19危机期间，食品和零售行业中客户受到虐待的问题备受关注。本文的目的是研究COVID-19大流行情况下的问题，并研究其对工作场所员工反生产行为的影响。具体而言，本研究旨在通过考虑在COVID-19智能锁定期间运营的咖啡馆中的认知反省的中介作用和服务员领导的调节作用来调查客户虐待与员工适得其反行为之间的关系。

设计/方法/方法

向位于巴基斯坦两个大城市的咖啡馆和咖啡店工作的479名一线工作人员分发了结构化的调查表。通过使用自举回归程序分析问卷数据，以确定在大流行期间调查的变量如何影响适得其反的工作行为。

发现

调查结果显示，在员工反省的情况下，客户的不当对待直接或间接地会对生产不良的工作行为产生积极影响。此外，人们发现，咖啡馆和咖啡店中仆人领导的存在减轻了大流行期间顾客受到虐待的影响。

创意/价值

这项研究提供了一种新颖的见解，以了解迄今为止在COVID-19大流行情况下客户的虐待，适得其反的工作行为，员工的反省和仆人领导之间的关系，这一点迄今尚未探索。