Firms need to step in when customers harass service staff, argue Laura Good and Rae Coope

Cooper, Rae

Good, Laura

LSE Research Online

8/17/2016When it’s not your job to be friendly with clientsblogs.lse.ac.uk /businessreview/2016/08/17/when-its-not-your-job-to-be-friendly-with-clients/Customer service outrage. The phrase instantly conjures up stories of customers being ripped off, mistreated andrudely dismissed by sales staff. Yet we rarely stop to consider a different side to the story and examine theexperiences of the thousands of workers in retail and hospitality, who deal with offensive, intimidating andhumiliating treatment from customers on a daily basis. One particularly concerning area here is sexual harassment.Studies across a range of economies have shown that sexual harassment from customers in the service sector as asignificant problem, with measures of incidence ranging from 24 per cent of hospitality workers in a New Zealandstudy (Poulston, 2008), to 40 per cent of female retail employees in a US study ( Gettman and Gelfand, 2007) and ashigh as 67 per cent of female retail workers in a Canadian study (Hughes and Tadic, 1998).For Nicole* working in an inner-city bar exposed her to ‘gross sexual attention’ from customers. One in particular, amiddle-aged man, would come in regularly and ask only to be served by her.‘He started off as normal and nice so I was friendly and chatted to him. It quickly escalated to the point where hewas calling me his angel and bringing me presents. The creepiest part was this time that he stayed at the hotelacross the road and got a room overlooking the pub. I looked out at one stage and saw that he was standing at thewindow not wearing any clothes. I was so creeped out and felt I couldn’t escape. It was just so gross and awkward,I didn’t know how to react.’And she is not alone. Our research at the University of Sydney Business School has found that retail and hospitalityworkers are being propositioned, objectified, ogled at, sworn at, spat on and grabbed by customers. We used a pilotstudy to examine how employees in the service sector respond to this sexual harassment from customers and totheorise why this is so.When faced with customer abuse, many employees find themselves unsure of what to do. Our research suggeststhat their action in response is likely to be informal in nature, such as speaking to a co-worker or line manager,rather than making a written complaint to their boss or making a complaint to an external regulatory body.We conceptualised the way that employees respond to harassment from customers as processes of ‘coping and1/3contesting’. In a coping response, employees attempt to minimise their engagement with the harasser anddepersonalise the situation, even employing emotional labour so as not to aggravate the customer. Humour is usedto joke about the harassment as an unpleasant but unremarkable aspect of their job, such as in the case of Cody, aRetail Assistant:‘We kind of would make fun of it together. It would happen all the time to the girls next door as well, they were evenmore visible from the street … those sort of guys did come into the shop and they’d come up and say all sorts ofstuff and ask girls out all the time, and no one ever followed that up but we’d always joke about it. ‘Oh here’s yourfriend, he’s coming again’. It was more that kind of ‘oh your friend turned up again today, he was after you’. Talkedabout these regular guys as if they were a bit pathetic but sort of teasing the girls about it too … it would be morelike ‘oh he’s so creepy’ or ‘what a loser’.A contesting process was characterised by employees telling the customer that their behaviour had beeninappropriate and unwanted. It drew more on emotions of anger, injustice and a violation of respectful norms ofcustomer service.So why do these workers respond in such ways? There is an intersection between the social norms of the servicesector, and the precarious working conditions of low status-employees in insecure employment. Some employeesinternalise customer service expectations and prioritise customer demands above their own needs, seeing sexualharassment as a manifestation of the higher status that customers have relative to employees, as articulated byKevin, an employee in Retail:‘A lot of the time, customers will look down on people who work in the retail industry. I think that is obvious in these[harassment] situations, because a lot of the time the staff then feel that the customer has the right to look down onthem in that way. They feel like they’re serving this customer and they are indebted to this customer in a way andshould have to just deal with whatever the customer says.’Others simply see complaining as not worth the effort. In our study sample, many of whom were young casuals intheir first job with uncertain shifts and anti-social working hours, they primarily viewed their job as temporary and ‘notreal’. In perceiving their work this way, these employees ignore their experiences and render them invisible tobroader society, a nuisance to put up with for a few years until they begin their proper career. This is seen in thecase of Isabelle, a Retail Assistant:‘I don’t treat the job with any kind of long-term prospects in mind… It’s fine, it’s not the greatest thing ever, but it’s notthe worst thing ever… It’s just the customers that are the problem, but I won’t have to deal with them for much longerso what’s the point complaining?’What can be done? Abusive behaviour against any person must not be tolerated, especially when they are simplytrying to do their job. In Australia where this research was conducted, sexual harassment from customers is illegalunder the Sex Discrimination Act 1984, though the troubling behaviour found in our highlights the need for additionalaction over and above this legislation. Policymakers can make the issue more visible with awareness-raising andthe promotion of best practice. Unions too can raise awareness among their members and work with employers toput clear policies in place. Organisations need to take action on a workplace level, by implementing clearprocedures and reducing employee vulnerability through strengthening security measures. Managers must do moreto protect workers, by giving them better training on their workplace rights and what to do in uncomfortablesituations, as well as stepping in to help them and barring offending customers. Managers have a responsibility totheir employees to provide a workplace free from harassment and harm, including harassment from customers.Sexual harassment from customers must not be conceptualised as part of an employee’s job, nor should employeesfeel left to deal with it alone. More can be done and must be done to address the issue to create workplaces freefrom all types of harassment.2/3 *Names have been changed.♣♣♣Notes:This post is based on the authors’ paper ‘But It’s Your Job To Be Friendly’: Employees Coping With andContesting Sexual Harassment from Customers in the Service Sector, Gender, Work & Organization, Volume23, Issue 5, September 2016,  Pages 447–469The post gives the views of its authors, not the position of LSE Business Review or the London School ofEconomics.Featured image credit: Harassment of a waitress, by Johann Michael Neder, 1833, GermanischesNationalmuseum Public Domain via Wikimedia CommonsBefore commenting, please read our Comment PolicyLaura Good was awarded First Class Honours and the University Medal for her thesis: Voicingtheir complaints? Students working in retail and hospitality and sexual harassment by customers.She graduated from the University of Sydney, majoring in Industrial Relations andHuman Resource Management. She has previously worked as a Researcher at the University ofMelbourne and Research Assistant at the University of Sydney and now works as a Teacher inregional Victoria, Australia.Rae Cooper is Associate Professor and Associate Dean at the University of Sydney BusinessSchool.  Rae researches women’s careers, employment relations and flexible work and haspublished widely across these areas. Copyright © 2015 London School of Economics3/3

When it’s not your job to be friendly with clients

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