his case scenario will help you review the chapter material by applying it to a specific situation.

The first three weeks of your internship at Baer, Kramer, & Dreslin Market Research in Nashville were great. You enjoyed brainstorming marketing ideas with your manager and designing a survey for an important client. However, the past week has been pure misery. Your supervisor assigned you to join three other interns on a team to create a comprehensive online handbook for interns. Each summer, the company hires seven interns at your location in Nashville and seven more in the company$$s data processing department in New Delhi, India. You will work on your project with one other intern from the Nashville office and two interns from New Delhi.

Planning the first meeting was difficult. You lost two days of work trying to set a meeting time because there is a $10(1)/(2)-$hour time difference between Nashville and New Delhi; at $9$ am Central Daylight Time in Nashville, it is $7$:$30$ pm in New Delhi. You suggested a $7$ am teleconference, but your Nashville teammate, Roberto, said he could not arrive in the office early for a meeting. You suggest an $8$:$30$ am teleconference, which would be $7$ pm in New Delhi, but both your New Delhi teammates, Maansi and Anant, are vague about whether they could stay late. You beg Roberto to arrange to get to work early just one day so that your team can hold a kick$-$off meeting. Roberto admits that he could easily get to the office early but prefers to sleep later. $$And anyway,$$ he admits, $$I didn$$t sign up for human resources work when I accepted an internship in consumer research. How will this help me get a job?$$

Finally, you are able to convince Roberto to accommodate Maansi and Anant. The first meeting is scheduled for $7$:$30$ am Central Daylight Time. The meeting seems to begin well enough. Everyone arrives on time, the teleconferencing system works, and the meeting starts with friendly introductions. Within five minutes, though, you know you are in trouble. When Anant introduces himself, he speaks so quickly that you miss everything he says. You would be too embarrassed to ask him to repeat it$,$ so you remain quiet and pretend to understand. After the introductions, things get worse. No one has thought to make an agenda, so no one knows what the team is trying to accomplish. After a few moments of painful silence, you say, $$Well maybe we should just start sharing ideas about coming up with a plan for the online handbook.$$

Anant jumps right in$.$ You don$$t understand much of what he says, but you do hear the words $$user interface,$$programming$,$database$,$ and $$search functions.$$ You and Roberto look at each other in amazement. Why is Anant talking about computer programming? And why is he continuing to talk without stopping for five minutes? Is it rude to interrupt? Finally, Roberto says, $$Anant$,$ it sounds like you may have some good ideas, but we don$$t understand. We thought our job was to plan an online handbook.$$ Anant replied, $$That$$s what I$$m talking about.$$ Throughout all of this, Maansi remains silent. After the first meeting, you feel that it is going to be a long five weeks until the end of your summer internship.