Polite Pays: What Happens When Civility Drops

Genesis Maldonado
Nov 3
3 min read

Article: The employee as a punching bag: The effect of multiple sources of incivility on employee withdrawal behavior and sales performance by Michael Sliter, Katherine Sliter, and Steve M. Jex.

Fun note: one of the authors, Dr. Steve Jex, is a University of Central Florida (UCF) professor I know personally and my current lab professor. I also do I-O psychology research at UCF, so this topic is close to home. Check him out on his UCF page (https://sciences.ucf.edu/psychology/person/steve-jex/).

The quick gist

This study followed 120 bank tellers over several months to see how incivility affects real outcomes. Incivility here means low-grade rudeness, like eye-rolling, being ignored, or snippy comments. Researchers looked at two sources: customers and coworkers. They then linked those experiences to objective sales numbers and withdrawal at work (tardiness and absenteeism).

What they found is pretty straightforward and very actionable:

Customer rudeness hurts results. More rude customer encounters were followed by lower sales and more lateness and absences.
Coworker rudeness fuels absence. People who dealt with uncivil coworkers were absent more, though coworker incivility alone did not directly lower sales.
The combo is the killer. When employees faced both rude customers and uncivil coworkers, sales dropped more, and absences climbed more. In other words, rudeness stacks, and it stacks in a bad way.

Why this matters to business owners

We often focus on big “burnout” topics and miss these small cuts. This study shows that the small cuts add up to real dollars. Sales dip. People miss work. And it gets worse when rudeness comes from more than one direction.

What to do about it

Here is a simple owner’s playbook you can start using this month:

Set a clear civility line inside your walls. Make “basic respect” a norm everyone can repeat. Add it to onboarding, team huddles, and performance reviews. Coach what “civil” looks like in your context.
Back your frontline after tough customer moments. Create a quick reset rule. After a nasty interaction, the employee can step away for a short break or tag a teammate in. Tiny resets protect performance later in the shift.
Train for hard conversations with customers. Give scripts for saying no, offering options, and closing a tense exchange politely. Confidence reduces spirals.
Track and respond. Log rude-customer incidents and coworker friction with a lightweight form. If the same patterns or people keep coming up, step in early.
Protect your team from chronic abusers. If a customer crosses your red lines repeatedly, escalate. Sometimes the right business decision is to end the relationship.
Make supervisors your buffer. Teach leads to notice strain, rotate coverage, and praise recovery behaviors after hard moments. Support from a boss can offset a bad interaction.

Key takeaways

Customer incivility predicts lower sales and more lateness and absences.
Coworker incivility predicts more absences by itself.
Facing both sources at once leads to the worst outcomes. Reduce either source to protect performance.
Small, repeated stressors matter. You do not need a major blow-up to see real business costs.

FAQ

Why does this matter to me as an owner? Because it hits your P&L in quiet ways. A few rude moments a day can nudge sales down and push absences up. Over weeks, that is missed revenue and extra scheduling headaches.

How would this look in my business? You will notice patterns like a top performer having a “flat” week after a string of tense customer issues, or a solid employee calling out more often when a coworker is consistently short-tempered or dismissive. The data in this study show that those patterns are not random. They are predictable.

What are the first steps to applying this? Start tiny and visible:

Add a 60-second “reset rule” after tough customer interactions.
Add one line to team huddles: “How we speak is part of the job.”
Create a one-page guide with three phrases for de-escalation and three for handoffs. You can build from there once people feel the changes are practical and supportive.

How do I measure progress? Track three things together: 1) logged incivility incidents, 2) shift-level sales or service outcomes, 3) lateness and call-outs. You want to see incidents trend down and, over time, steadier sales and fewer absences on the same schedule.

What if my customers are the problem? Some will be. Your best lever is how fast and how well your team resets after a rough exchange. Train the reset, back people up, and draw lines with repeat offenders.

Does this apply to small teams, too? Yes. In small teams, one uncivil person amplifies faster. The fix is also faster when you make expectations clear and coach early.

APA citation:

Sliter, M., Sliter, K., & Jex, S. M. (2012). The employee as a punching bag: The effect of multiple sources of incivility on employee withdrawal behavior and sales performance. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 33(1), 121–139. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.767