"Why Me?!" An Attribution Perspective on Employees' Flight-or-Fight Responses to Customer Mistreatment

Drawing on attribution theories, this study presents an integrated moderated serial mediation model to explain when and why customer mistreatment is associated with victimized employees' contrasting "flight" and "fight" responses. Specifically, we propose that observed customer mistreatment serves as an individually perceived social cue that shapes how employees interpret and respond to their own mistreatment experiences. When similar mistreatment is rarely observed among colleagues, employees are more likely to see themselves as singled out, a perception accompanied by greater self-blame and, in turn, shame and psychological withdrawal. When such mistreatment is commonly observed, employees may instead hold customers responsible, which is linked to greater hostility and, in turn, retaliatory service sabotage. Using three-wave time-lagged data from 282 customer-service employees across various industries, we found support for the hypothesized moderating effects of observed customer mistreatment. The conditional serial indirect effect on psychological withdrawal through self-blame and shame was significant, whereas for service sabotage, the separate indirect effects through customer-directed blame and hostility were significant, but their serial indirect effect was not. These findings advance understanding of the boundary conditions and cognitive-affective processes that may underlie employees' flight-or-fight reactions to customer mistreatment and offer implications for both theory and practice.