Overview

These situations are designed to help you develop one of the most important workplace skills identified by employers $$ Critical Thinking.

Developing these skills requires that a person:

$$ Thinking creatively by generating new ideas

$$ Make decisions by specifying goals and constraints, generating alternatives, considering risks, and evaluating alternatives

$$ Learn by using learning techniques to acquire and apply knowledge or skills

$$ Reason by discovering a rule or principle underlying the relationship between objects and apply it when solving a problem

Directions

Personnel Problem

Recently your office was redesigned and redecorated. The partitions that formed the private offices were removed, and a landscaped office design with smaller partitions and module furniture was used. The office is beautiful. You work in a modular arrangement with Madison Stevens, an administrative professional in purchasing, and Arista Compton, an administrative professional in financial planning.

Madison and Arista spend much of their time talking. They remain at their workstations and shout over the $$masking noise$$ to be heard. Their talking has decreased your productivity. The first week you tried to overlook the interruptions and worked overtime to keep up with your work. Later, Mr$.$ Wilson asked you to plan your work so that you would not have to work overtime. You did not tell Mr$.$ Wilson why you were working overtime. The next day you asked Madison and Arista to refrain from talking so much, but they ignored your request.

You are getting so far behind with your work that you are taking it home with you.

Today you again asked Madison and Arista to stop talking so loudly and so much. Arista retorted, $$Don$$t be such a nag$.$ You became so upset that you fell ill. You took the afternoon off. All afternoon you worried about your work piling up and your inability to concentrate while Madison and Arista talked loudly.

What are the solutions to your problem? You decide that you need help with it$.$ Capture in writing what you are going to do and what you will say. Do not exceed more than $1$ page.