ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the images used to understand employee experiences in a major part of the post-industrial economy that of front-line service work. It explores the toxicity image in a variety of employee-customer situations, where the term "customer" is used in a broad sense to refer to anyone who is a recipient of a service of any kind, be it one delivered by private-, public-, or voluntary-sector organizations. The chapter discusses some of the images from the existing literature that help to understand the nature of the employee–customer interface. It also explores a variety of types of situations in which toxicity image may be applied: these are where customer activities and words experienced as toxic; where employees respond to experiences of toxicity by engaging in revenge of some kind. One way in which employees may experience toxicity is via customer actions and words. Employees may sometimes respond to customer toxicity by explicitly desiring revenge, but not acting this out.
