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Service employees’ surface acting is exhausting, but it is unclear if exhaustion appears instantly after a single service episode. Moreover, evidence regarding the reversed causality in which exhaustion predicts surface acting is scarce and unequivocal. Our experience-sampling study investigates dynamic reciprocal relations between service employees’ exhaustion and surface acting, and additionally deep acting, across two service episodes, the first one of the day and the last one before lunchtime. Drawing on conservation of resources theory, we hypothesised that exhaustion is an antecedent of episode-specific surface acting and that episode-specific surface acting is an antecedent of exhaustion directly following the service episode. During five days, 120 service employees answered three daily surveys between morning and lunchtime. Multilevel path analysis showed that exhaustion before work was not …