Research on thriving has garnered significant scholarlyattention. Yet, knowledge is lacking on the role that poly-chronicity plays in leveraging the hard work and dedicationof frontline employees to acquire and utilize new knowl-edge and skill sets needed to thrive at work, and the con-dition under which this is expected to occur. We draw onthe socially embedded model of thriving to examine howfrontline employees' polychronic proclivities elicit theirthriving at work (i.e. learning) through work engagementmechanism and the boundary condition of the unintended(negative) consequence of training. We examine our hypoth-eses based on a unique multi-wave and multi-source datafrom 261 frontline hotel employees and their colleagues in10 four-star hotels in Ghana. Results indicate polychronic-ity's direct and indirect (via work engagement) effect on thelearning facet of thriving at work. The strength of the directeffect of polychronicity on work engagement is offset andthe indirect effect is attenuated by the unintended (negative)effect of the training frontline employees receive from theirhotel organizations. Implications for theory and practice arediscussed, with limitations and several suggestions made forfuture research endeavours.