Many service workers receive customer mistreatment—low-quality interpersonal treatment from customers—yet little is known about why employees differ in how much customer mistreatment they receive. Drawing upon career construction theory, we cast a spotlight on the service career-situated strengths and attributes that confer upon service workers both the ability and motivation to successfully fulfill service norms and avoid interpersonal mistreatment. Specifically, we focus on customer orientation and career adaptability as career-situated motivations and abilities, respectively, that explain which employees receive more customer mistreatment. The proposed model was tested and expanded programmatically in a series of three studies using dyadic and daily diary field studies. The results across all three studies show that employees who possessed high levels of career adaptability in tandem with high levels of customer orientation were less likely to experience customer mistreatment. These results held even after controlling for Big Five personality factors in Studies 2 and 3. We discuss theoretical implications for the antecedents of workplace mistreatment, the mixed blessing of customer orientation for service workers, and the role of career processes in workplace aggression.

许多服务人员受到客户虐待——来自客户的低质量人际对待——但人们对为什么员工在受到客户虐待的程度方面存在差异知之甚少。借鉴职业建设理论，我们将焦点放在服务职业中赋予服务人员成功履行服务规范和避免人际虐待的能力和动力的优势和属性。具体来说，我们将客户导向和职业适应性分别作为职业定位的动机和能力来解释哪些员工受到更多的客户虐待。所提出的模型在使用二元和日常日记实地研究的一系列三项研究中进行了测试和扩展。所有三项研究的结果都表明，具有高水平职业适应性和高水平客户导向的员工不太可能遭受客户虐待。即使在研究 2 和 3 中控制了大五人格因素后，这些结果仍然存在。我们讨论了对工作场所虐待前因的理论意义、服务人员以客户为导向的混合祝福，以及职业过程在工作场所攻击中的作用。