Real-Life Decision Making
As a retail manager, your job responsibilities include hiring, supervising,
and, if necessary, firing employees. Your training and experience, along with
your naturally people-oriented personality, have prepared you for these tasks.
Retail managers work in a lot of different venues. The more common ones
are department stores, grocers and specialty shops. You can also work on cruise
ships. There's still merchandise planning, budgeting, sales analysis,
and the supervising, hiring and firing of staff.
Teamwork is important to a sales staff. When people like and respect each
other, business is much more productive. As a manager, it is a delicate balance
between being friendly with your employees and being strong enough to enforce
rules and procedures.
Working on board a cruise ship, as Lee Brown once did, where "we all work,
live and socialize with each other," can be a good test of your abilities.
You are manager of seven gift shops, one assistant manager and 12 sales
assistants. The ship is docked in port in Mexico and the shops can't
open because of trading laws. Therefore, all the sales staff are off on a
shore excursion, enjoying their free time.
The shops are set to open again as the ship sails. An hour after opening,
an employee approaches you saying that another employee, Ted, has not been
seen since going into the stockroom when the shop first reopened.
You call the stockroom, but get no answer. You find Ted asleep on the bags
of clothing which were supposed to be brought up to the sales floor. It turns
out that Ted had had too much to drink while on shore because he had been
upset upon learning that his grandmother was seriously ill.
Ted has been a good employee up until now, a good friend, and is well liked
among the team. On the other hand, being drunk at work is considered gross
misconduct and is grounds for firing.
What do you do?