Case Study

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Week 3 Ethical Dilemma Project – Case Study

Student Name

Ethics 232

Professor

20, September 2020

Ethical Dilemma Project –Case Study

Directions : Fill in the blanks.

1. The ethical dilemma I selected from the list of topics is dating in the workplace.

2. The case I selected is an event currently ongoing at my place of employment.

Background of the Real Case

I started a new job a few months ago as a driver for a local pizza delivery place, with the understanding that I was training into management based on my background. At the time there were three other managers there that were to have a hand in my training. One of the three has since left and is not overly central to the event, aside from the fact that his departure forced me into management and made this event of greater concern and impact to me directly.

The two managers that are central to this event, Mr. Smith and Mrs. Jones, are both fairly young, with little in the way of professional work experience, but are both very driven in their own ways. During my time training with them I got to know both reasonably well. Mr. Smith is very serious young man who has a great deal of energy and thrives in an environment where he is expected to work fast and work hard. He is very strict and very precise; everything has to be by the book for him. But he also needs to see that those around him are working just as hard or he becomes disgruntled and his behavior openly reflects this. Mrs. Jones is a lot less serious in nature, and while she is a hard worker, she is not as concerned with things being exact and will easily take advantage of slow periods to relax and socialize. She is a very open and outgoing personality and in her own words flirty to a fault.

Mr. Smith and Mrs. Jones considered themselves friends, by their own definition. At some point though Mr. Smith took the flirty behavior of Mrs. Jones to imply that there could be something more between them. Smith made some overtures toward her verbally and via text messaging. Mrs. Jones is not great at direct confrontation, so she passed off his verbal overtures as just their usual banter. The text messages however Jones felt were a bit over the top, and she took them to the General Manager. The GM then had no choice but to address it with Mr. Smith as inappropriate behavior.

The situation between the two of them had become tense and awkward, the bantering had turned mean, and it was beginning to spill over to the crew under them. Within two weeks Mr. Smith had decided he no longer wanted to be a manager and stepped down. Things in the store are still tense, and they both seem to go out of their way to antagonize each other. It has caused problems on the shifts of every other manager at one point or another. There have been impacts to morale and production. Other managers and I have had to go to the GM demanding that they not both be on our shifts at the same time, and I have had several conversations with the GM regarding possibilities for more permanent solutions.