Employee Emotional Labor Has Worsened in the COVID-19 Era

There has never been a more taxing time to be a worker in the hospitality industry than during the declining stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. After a year of lockdowns, closed businesses, and dining restrictions, American patrons want nothing more than a sense of normalcy during a simple shopping trip or a night out at a favorite restaurant. But as health officials warn, declining cases do not mean a vanquished virus, and with new variants emerging that are more easily transmissible, the need for continued vigilance even with the finish line is in sight, has never been greater. Unfortunately, pandemic fatigue can bring out the worst instincts in some customers, creating an unbearable work and social environment for workers and other patrons alike.

Customer hostility is not a new phenomenon. Long before COVID-19 decimated business-as-usual practices, there was already a vast literature on emotional labor in the service industry that documented the effects of customer mistreatment on employees’ psychological and work-related health.

A study on call center employees published by Grandey, Dickter, and Sin (2004) noted that employees reported an average of 10 separate instances of customer verbal aggression per day of work. Such acts included yelling, insults, and argumentativeness. Workers with high stress appraisals, i.e., those who interpreted the aggression as more threatening and disconcerting, engaged in more surface acting-related emotional labor, experienced greater emotional exhaustion, and subsequently reported more absences from work. These outcomes were also greater for service providers high in negative affectivity, a stable trait marked by a propensity toward fear and anger.

In the restaurant industry, power imbalances between customers and servers are heightened because customers control the purse strings that businesses and employees depend on for income and tips. When an offending party feels they have “nothing to lose” and recipients feel they have “nothing to gain” from a confrontation, it is open season for disgruntled customers to voice displeasure when they feel crossed. Now, open season has arrived, as dining restrictions loosen and pandemic-fatigued customers want to re-experience the royal treatment.

For unvaccinated workers, however, the specter of COVID anxiety — the fear of contracting or having the virus — still looms large. This is especially true for those who must either silently endure blasé customers who flout mask and distancing protocols, or worse, request compliance and risk their wrath. All of which is to say that even a virus on the decline has raised employee emotional labor to a fever pitch.

A customer expresses her dissatisfaction to a restaurant server.

Source: Drazen Zigic/Shutterstock

Recent research supports the view that COVID anxiety has strained work life due to what might be described as greater emotional labor burdens. During the early months of the pandemic, Trougakos, Chawla, and McCarthy (2020) surveyed a sample of over 500 Canadian workers across a wide range of industries to test the effects of COVID anxiety on work, family, and health outcomes. They found that the threat of the virus instilled feelings of helplessness and anxiety — unwanted emotions people tended to suppress and bottle up — depleting resources needed for psychological fulfillment, including the need to be competent at work and interpersonally connected with others. The loss of psychological need fulfillment, in turn, sidelined job performance and goal attainment. In other words, COVID anxiety compromised job performance because employees experienced and suppressed negative emotions that thwarted psychological goals. Interestingly, however, hand-washing served as an effective problem-focused coping method that mitigated the sense of lost control by minimizing the virus’ effects.

That COVID-19 has upended life as we know it is a cliché. What is perhaps less obvious is the common theme underlying that upending: a loss of control. The research cited above suggests that central to workers’ deleterious wellbeing was a sense of low autonomy or a lack of control over their work situations either because of organizational norms prioritizing customer satisfaction over all else, or because of existential threats such as from a pandemic.

Therefore, any measures taken to raise job autonomy and restore lost control could serve to remedy the problem. Managers could aid in this process by allowing workers to take a break after dealing with a stressful customer or to refuse service to disrespectful or safety-violating customers. Businesses might also implement policies that either eliminate the need for tipping by raising menu prices, or add automatic service charges to bills so that employees are not at the mercy of entitled customers for their tips. These measures would tilt the current power imbalance back into a more equitable position.

Workers can also take personal steps to regain their autonomy and enhance their work and psychological wellbeing. To protect themselves from COVID anxiety, they could adopt safety practices such as wearing masks, hand-washing regularly, social distancing, and getting the vaccine once eligible. When interacting with hostile customers, workers could use cognitive reappraisal strategies (Gross & John, 2003), a practice known to inhibit the build-up of negative emotions when a more benign perspective is adopted. For example, flight attendants might imagine irritable passengers as small children in order to better manage their own emotions. As the virus eventually fades into the background and current tensions subside, the new reason for emotional labor would then just be a temporary spike in hospitality history.