sometimes arrived back late from lunch breaks. It is now late October. Last week, 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 The department workload has been particularly heavy since the new wing opened in September. Around the beginning of October, Henry noticed that Lucy Case Study and has performed well through a few organizational changes. all-employee 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 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 didn't show up for the meeting she didn't even call in. Jeff and Jim commented on her absence to Henry: "Either something's really wrong, or she's really fed up with you." Henry agreed and said, "If she is messing around with me, she's 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 week's 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 Turnover, Discipline, and Exits 441 ime sheet that read: "Henry, I took some work home Thursday night to try and catch up. I hope that's 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 wasn't 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 morning - Friday. She agreed. Now it's Friday. Lucy arrives and is seated in Henry's office with the door closed. Henry begins, "Lucy, I'm glad you came this morning. I've been worried about you. You've been taking longer lunches than you should be sometimes, and you haven't changed that pattern, even when I've talked with you about it. And now, in the last couple weeks, you've been late or missing or sick a lot. Yesterday you violated our policy that says you should call your direct supervisor when you're not coming in. I saw the note you attached to last week's time sheet; you know you're not supposed to take overtime without my advance permission. Can you tell me what the problem is?" Lucy reacts quickly. "There's 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 zone-work orders everywhere, a computer that's a piece of junk, the phone ringing off the hook, and people standing in line to tell me what a lousy job I'm doing. Every morning it's been all I could do to get up and face the day. Now I'm just not sure I want to put up with it anymore." "Whoa, now, slow down," says Henry. "Let's start at the beginning." He asks about the workload, especially since the new wing's 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, it's much slower than it should be at accessing and saving information And Lucy is uncomfortable with the amount of attention-sometimes unwelcome attention--focused on her, the sole woman in the department. Henry listens care- fully, 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 she's wrong. "Well," says Henry, "let's talk now about how things should work for some- one in your position. How did it work before I got here?" Lucy brightens a little as "there are 442 Chapter 13 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 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 Henry responds to Lucy's concerns about the rude workers, the workload, and the unacceptably late housekeeping work orders by saying he can do some thing about those issues. He says he'll talk to his own boss about the possibility of getting a part-time assistant to work with her. "However," he says, 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 you'll be gone is still a rule--it's not fair to me, and it's 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 we're 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 can't 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 don't know what to do with Lucy. We don't have any employment problems writ- ten 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 she's going to come through. She seems near the point of no return in her own mind. I'm uneasy with keeping someone like that. Any effort she makes to change will be just a show until she knows she's off 'probation.' Then she'll go right back to the way she is now. What do you think we should do with her?" Discussion Questions 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? A! what point did she cross the line