In the past, research on grievances generally has excluded the views of grievants about the process and its consequences. This study is an analysis of self‐reports of 324 grievants concerning the characteristics of a grievance‐filing incident and its perceived outcomes. The results raise questions about the veracity of the industrial relations dictum that grievances should be settled at the lowest step in the process. Instead, the nature of the settlement and the type of grievance were perceived to have significant effects on outcome and attitude measu