Second-class citizens? Perceptions and reality: discourtesy in serving lines in a college cafeteria.

Personal experience on a serving line suggested that many of the customers were unfriendly, rude, inconsiderate, and unappreciative of the efforts of the servers. Our review found little research studying the behavior of customers and even less that used direct observations of customers' behavior while being served. The purpose of this study was to check the authors' perceptions of rude behavior by systematically observing the actual behavior of the customers in a college cafeteria serving line.