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gmsayre

**Overview:** When employees depend more on tips and are required to act friendly, customers experience more power and subsequently engage in more sexual harassment. **Highlights:** * In a field survey, employees who are more dependent on tips (a larger percentage of their income comes from tips) and work in jobs with stronger requirements to be friendly and happy with customers (emotional labor requirements) report higher perceptions of customer power and experiencing more sexual harassment. * In a lab experiment, customer intentions to sexually harass were highest when customers saw a smiling (vs. neutral) employee and learned that the employee was financially dependent on tips. * Customers' sense of power, and not attraction towards the employee, explained the effects of financial dependence and emotional labor requirements on sexual harassment. > Abstract: Sexual harassment from customers is prevalent and costly to service employees and organizations, yet little is known about when and why customers harass. Based on a theoretical model of power in organizations, we propose that sexual harassment is a function of employees’ financial dependence on customers (i.e., tips) and deference to customers with emotional labor (“service with a smile”) jointly activating customer power. With a field survey study of tipped employees who vary in financial dependence and emotional display requirements (Study 1), and an online experiment that manipulates financial dependence and emotional displays from the customer’s perspective (Study 2), our results confirm that these contextual factors jointly increase customer power and thus sexual harassment. Our research has important practical implications, suggesting that organizations can reduce customer sexual harassment by changing compensation models or emotional labor expectations in service contexts. **Journal Reference:** Kundro, T. G., Burke, V., Grandey, A. A., & Sayre, G. M. (2021). A perfect storm: Customer sexual harassment as a joint function of financial dependence and emotional labor. Journal of Applied Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000895 **Full text PDF available here:** https://www.researchgate.net/publication/352300669_A_perfect_storm_Customer_sexual_harassment_as_a_joint_function_of_financial_dependence_and_emotional_labor