While frontline employees (FLEs) have traditionally served customers, their role has evolved to include monitoring and enforcement of customers’ deviant behaviors. In addition to guarding against forms of deviant behavior such as shoplifting, FLEs have recently been tasked with ensuring customers’ compliance with store policies involving wearing masks and social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, at some point, the role of FLEs has evolved into not only serving customers, but also to policing customer compliance. Academic researchers and practitioners have proposed the use of FLEs to reduce deviant behavior yet little is known about the impact of using FLEs in a guardianship capacity on the FLEs themselves. Thus, the current work explores the mechanisms and outcomes of expecting FLEs to act as guardians against consumers’ deviant behaviors. Our theoretical framework draws upon equity theory where we propose that retailers’ deviant behavior policies reduce FLEs perceptions of organizational justice. Our framework also posits that certain policy elements (e.g., employee empowerment, strictness of policy from the perspective of the FLE’s actions) and social factors (e.g., whether there are customers around to witness the FLE’s response to deviant behavior) moderate the effect of deviant behavior policies on perceptions of organizational justice.