HOSPITALITY HR MANAGEMENT TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE CHAPTER 13

Case Study: Can One Month Destroy Seven Years? Lucy at Risk in an At-Will State

Henry is the maintenance manager at an older hotel that has been renovated in recent years. He is a newcomer to the property and just reached his six-month anniversary. Lucy is his administrative assistant. She supports him and the entire three-shift operation by entering and updating work orders on a computerized maintenance management system. She has been with the property for seven years and has performed well through a few organizational changes. The department workload has been particularly heavy since the new wing opened in September. Around the beginning of October, Henry noticed that Lucy sometimes arrived back late from lunch breaks. It is now late October. Last week, Lucy started to fall behind in her paperwork. On Tuesday and Wednesday she arrived late and took long lunches. She called in sick on Friday and again this past Monday. On Tuesday Henry checked in with Lucy when she arrived for work and asked if she was feeling better. She did not look at him, but mumbled, As well as could be expected. Two maintenance personnel, Jeff and Jim, entered the office and began finishing up their paperwork. Henry told Lucy about an all-employee meeting first thing Wednesday morning and said it was important that she be there, both as a valuable maintenance-team member and as an employee of the property as a whole. She sighed and said that she would be there. But Wednesday morning she didnt show up for the meeting; she didnt even call in. Jeff and Jim commented on her absence to Henry: Either somethings really wrong, or shes really fed up with you. Henry agreed and said, If she is messing around with me, shes not going to get away with it. He began mulling over in his mind the option of firing her. In the at-will state in which the property was located, he could fire for no reason at all.Right after lunch on Wednesday, Henry looked over the weeks time sheets and noticed that Lucy had listed eight hours of work for each day she had been gone, Friday and Monday, plus five overtime hours. She had attached a note to her time sheet that read: Henry, I took some work home Thursday night to try and catch up. I hope thats all right. Lucy showed up around 2 P.M. on Wednesday. Henry confronted her and said her attendance pattern and some other behaviors were unacceptable. He said he wanted to schedule a counseling session with her first thing Thursday morning. Lucy, visibly upset, quickly agreed. She worked haltingly for the rest of Wednesday. Thursday morning there was no sign of Lucy. Fifteen minutes after she was supposed to have met with Henry, one of the supervisors under Henry brought him a message from her saying she felt too stressed about the meeting and too overwhelmed with her workload to come. Henry called her at home right away to find out what exactly was going on. Lucy repeated much of what she had said in the phone message: she was exhausted, she was overwhelmed by the workload, and she was stressed about meeting with him. She added that she wasnt even sure if she wanted to work at the hotel anymore. Henry listened but said a face-to-face talk would be important for an in-depth discussion of the issues. He asked Lucy if she would be willing to meet with him first thing the next morningFriday. She agreed. Now its Friday. Lucy arrives and is seated in Henrys office with the door closed. Henry begins, Lucy, Im glad you came this morning. Ive been worried about you. Youve been taking longer lunches than you should be sometimes, and you havent changed that pattern, even when Ive talked with you about it. And now, in the last couple weeks, youve been late or missing or sick a lot. Yesterday you violated our policy that says you should call your direct supervisor when youre not coming in. I saw the note you attached to last weeks time sheet; you know youre not supposed to take overtime without my advance permission. Can you tell me what the problem is? Lucy reacts quickly. Theres been so much to do lately, and no one has helped me a bit! Did you ever stop to think about how that new wing would affect my job?

This place has been like a war zonework orders everywhere, a computer thats a piece of junk, the phone ringing off the hook, and people standing in line to tell me what a lousy job Im doing. Every morning its been all I could do to get up and face the day. Now Im just not sure I want to put up with it anymore. Whoa, now, slow down, says Henry. Lets start at the beginning. He asks about the workload, especially since the new wings opening, and Lucy shares how abandoned she felt when the department hired several new maintenance workers but gave no extra support on the administrative end. The computer has been down every few weeks for as much as three days at a time. When it is up and running, its much slower than it should be at accessing and saving information. And Lucy is uncomfortable with the amount of attentionsometimes unwelcome attentionfocused on her, the sole woman in the department. Henry listens carefully, noting and apologizing for those things for which he is most clearly at fault. He acknowledges those feelings and perceptions he can understand, even when he thinks shes wrong. Well, says Henry, lets talk now about how things should work for someone in your position. How did it work before I got here? Lucy brightens a little as she reminisces about how she was able to meet the various challenges of her work in the earlier years. She mentions how housekeeping now fails to get work orders in to her in time to affect the room status update for the front desk by 2 P.M. She also lists the names of several newer maintenance workers who are particularly rude when she gets behind. Henry pulls out the job description for her position, and they together discuss some ideas based on that. Henry responds to Lucys concerns about the rude workers, the workload, and the unacceptably late housekeeping work orders by saying he can do something about those issues. He says hell talk to his own boss about the possibility of getting a part-time assistant to work with her. However, he says, there are some parts of your job description that are nonnegotiable. You were wrong to take those overtime hours without asking me. The rule about calling your direct supervisor when youll be gone is still a ruleits not fair to me, and its not fair to make the other supervisor play middleman for you. I cannot, we as a department cannot afford to have an administrative assistant with irregular attendance. All our maintenance workers are counting on you and me to organize their work and keep them focused and busy. Beyond that, the front desk, housekeeping, sales lots of departments are affected when were backed up. Ultimately, the property loses guests. Lucy shifts in her seat. I think you have given the property a lot in past years, and you are still valuable to us now. But you cant go on dealing with the problems here by not showing up. If you hide your head in the sand one more time, your job will not be here for you when you come out. Do I make myself clear? Lucy nods, stone-faced. Lucy leaves the office. Henry heads straight for the human resources office to talk with Brad, the human resources director, about his meeting. He tells Brad, I dont know what to do with Lucy. We dont have any employment problems written up in her file, but now all this has happened. Henry recounts the events of the last month or so, including the meeting he just had. I really doubt shes going to come through. She seems near the point of no return in her own mind. Im uneasy with keeping someone like that. Any effort she makes to change will be just a show until she knows shes off probation. Then shell go right back to the way she is now. What do you think we should do with her?

1. Should Henry have handled his meeting with Lucy any differently? How so? 2. If you were Brad, the human resources director, what advice would you give Henry? 3. Is Lucy guilty of willful disregard for her employer? gross misconduct? At what point did she cross the line?