How Boss Envy Will Ruin Your Romantic Getaway

When bad customer service puts a damper on alone time with your partner

You go on a romantic getaway with your partner that you’ve looked forward to for months. You’ve booked a room at a high-end hotel and can’t wait to try out the heart-shaped bed and enjoy all the amenities the establishment has to offer.

But you can’t.

Why?

“Workers who are more envious are less willing to perform….”

Because the customer service is horrible from the moment you walk through the door. Not only is there a problem with your reservation, the staff has a bad attitude about correcting their mistake. The room service keeps forgetting your orders and when the food does eventually come, it’s horrible. It seems like every encounter you have with hotel staff is negative throughout your stay — which also puts a damper on everything else you planned for your getaway, including the sex romps — and now you’re as excited to go home as you were to get there.

What really happened to cause all these problems that ruined your romantic getaway?

In a word: envy.

Specifically, the customer service problems may be traced back to the relationship that the less-than-helpful employees have with their boss. And if that boss has better relationships with other workers, the bad employees may become envious — and take these feelings out on you, according to a study in the International Journal of Hospitality Management.

“People who are less envious often go above and beyond their normal job duties to do things like cover for an employee who has gone home to help a sick family member,” said researcher John O’Neill. “Conversely, workers who are more envious are less willing to perform these additional duties.”

“Limiting envy is crucial….”

O’Neill and his colleagues, Soo Kim and Hyun-Min Cho, studied hotel employees — including workers with housekeeping, desk, and food service jobs — at full-service hotels to determine the relationships they had with their supervisors and how those relationships affected their performance. Many of the workers who reported bad relationships with their bosses also admitted being jealous of the coworkers who had better relationships with the head honcho. The result of this envy was a reduction of both morale and performance, as these employees were less likely to do anything but the bare minimum — and coworkers and customers suffered for it.

“Guests often need hotel workers to go above and beyond their normal job duties, even if it’s just making a cup of coffee when the restaurant is closed. Performing these extra duties for guests, in turn, creates guests who are loyal to the hotel,” said O’Neill. “Limiting envy is crucial not just to the success of the employee in his or her career, but it’s crucial to the success of the hotel itself. The success of a hotel lies in how it treats its guests.”

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Source:

Envious employees can turn hospitality industry hostile. ScienceDaily. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100928101435.htm