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Customer mistreatment of employees is becoming increasingly common in the workplace. Yet, customer mistreatment research has focused almost entirely on how leaders can help employees recover after customer mistreatment has already happened rather than how leaders can actively manage customer mistreatment while it is happening. As a result, the ways in which leaders inevitably react during customer mistreatment are diverse, and the ultimate effectiveness of these active customer mistreatment management strategies remains untested. Drawing on both drama triangle theory and social exchange theory, I argue that leaders’ loyalty to employees targeted by customer mistreatment will foster employee-leader trust, culminating in increased leader-directed OCB and customer service. Conversely, leaders’ lack of loyalty to employees targeted by customer mistreatment will hinder employee-leader trust, resulting in increased leader-directed CWB and customer sabotage. Finally, these relationships hinge on leaders’ simultaneous loyalty to customers during customer mistreatment encounters, such that the relationships associated with leaders’ loyalty to employees are weakened, and the relationships associated with leaders’ lack of loyalty to employees are strengthened, when paired with leaders’ simultaneous loyalty to customers. I tested these hypotheses using both a field study and a vignette experiment, utilizing customer-facing employees from a variety of industries and occupations as participants for both studies. Across both studies, I found that leader loyalty to the employee increases trust, which in turn increases leader-directed OCB, increases customer service, and to some degree decreases leader-directed CWB. I also found that the leader loyalty to the customer negatively moderated these relationships, but only in the experimental study. This research extends the customer mistreatment literature, contextualizes LMX with respect to customers, and adds nuance to drama triangle theory.