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Service workers are expected to maintain high‐quality service delivery despite customer mistreatment—the poor‐quality treatment of service workers by customers—which can be demeaning and threatening to self‐esteem. Although service work is increasingly delivered by middle‐aged and older workers, very little is known about how employees across the age range navigate abuse from customers on the job. Does advancing age help or hinder service performance in reaction to customer mistreatment? Drawing on strength and vulnerability integration theory, we proposed that age paradoxically both helps and hinders performance after customer mistreatment, albeit at different stages. We tested our proposed model in a two‐sample field investigation of service workers and their supervisors using a time‐lagged, dyadic design. Results showed that age heightens the experience of self‐esteem threat but, nevertheless, dampens reactions to self‐esteem threat, leading to divergent effects on performance at different stages. Implications for age and service work, as well as aging and the sense of self, are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on cognitive job demands across the lifespan is fragmented and lacking a coherent theoretical framework. This article presents a review of the theoretical approaches and empirical findings on how cognitive job demands relate to strain across the lifespan. We position the demands-strain relationship within the broader context of the selection, optimization and compensation model of self-regulation. Then, by integrating principles of developmental cognitive science with the job demands-resources model, we describe, distinguish, and classify 8 forms of cognitive demands (time pressure, role ambiguity, choice-based role conflict, solution-based role conflict, creative problem-solving, complex problem-solving, vigilance, and awareness) according to whether they rely primarily on fluid cognitive abilities or on crystallized cognitive abilities, which each show systematic trajectories of growth and decline across the lifespan. This classification helps to explain why studies detect disparate effects of age in the relationship between cognitive demands and strain and provides a much needed theoretical integration of age differences in the effects of common cognitive demands at work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]