The Dangers of Poor Communication

Avoiding Conflict

The author of this report has been asked to view and review a YouTube video. It is a story told by two conflict manager experts that came across a case where a simple and reasonable statement on the part of one employee led to the sentiment of the statement, not to mention the reasoning behind it, changing and thus causing a much bigger mess than could ever be imagined by a reasonable person. Beyond that, both the fellow clerks in that office as well as the supervisors in the manager all worked themselves into a tizzy. When the two people in the YouTube video came into the fray, things were quickly diffused and resolved within seventy-two hours. This report will cover what caused the conflict, who was involved, why the conflict continued for months and what could or should have been done to avoid the problem. While miscommunication or lack thereof can obviously lead to problems, it should never be allowed to caused what was described in the YouTube video.

Analysis

Much of the salient facts and answers to the questions noted in the introduction have already been answered at a high level. However, there is a drilling down that needs to occur because the lack of proper and reasonable communication in this case was pathetically bad and the actions of both sides were really beyond the pale in comparison to the true gravity and depth of what was really going on. As noted in the video, there was a clerk who lived a rather large distance from where she worked. During the week, she was able to hitch a ride with a person in the same area via a carpool arrangement and this worked quite well for her. However, that carpool partner did not go to town during the weekends and the woman in question did not have a car. Her only alternative, other than simply not showing up, was to hitch a ride on a bus that was a two and a half hour trip each way and this was for a three hour shift. In other words, there was five hours of travel for three hours of work. Even if the costs involved made sense, the time certainly did not as the length of the commute was 166% of the shift time actually worked. This was obviously not reasonable. Even so, the clerk did not overtly refuse to work the shift. She just noted that she "could not" work the shift. In other words, she was seemingly asserting that while it was possible for her to do so, it really did not make a lot of sense from a time and investment standpoint. Beyond that, the author of this report would assert that surely some other arrangement could be made so that the clerk did not have to work that weekend shift and instead would only work when she could reasonably be at the office.

Anyhow, that is not what ended up happening. What actually happened is that the person she said "could not" to started talking to another manager and that person talked to yet another manager and "could not" turned into "would not." Rather than the message being "I'd rather not," it turned into "I will not." Rather than the employee's situation and feedback turning into a brainstorming session about how to deal with the challenge faced by the employee, the managers apparently ended up becoming indignant and infuriated that the employee would "dare" say such a thing about a work requirement. Never mind that the sentiment in question was bastardized and never mind that there was a very specific and basic reason why the Saturday shift was a struggle. Indeed, the managers and the boss got all worked up over that they seemingly thought was an uprising and an act of insubordination. Concurrent to that were the employees apparently rising up against each other and/or the aforementioned managers. The precise minutia and order of events is not made clear in the video. Regardless, there was a lot of drama that went on for nearly half a year and it would seem to have been easy to avoid all of this through a dialog process that was rather basic but yet never happened (YouTube, 2016).

To briefly answer the questions for this assignment based on the above, the cause of the conflict was lack of communication. Some might say it was the "could not" statement made by the worker but that is actually facetious on its face. Had the supervisor that first heard the employee done their job and done it right (not to mention the other people who helped escalate the situation), none of this would have happened. The employee who said "could not" was actually not being all that unreasonable. Indeed, riding on a bus for five hours for a three-hour shift is silly. True, it would have been better and optimal if the employee had a car if she was going to work that far away from home. However, she had a firm carpool arrangement and the only source of discord as it related to her showing up for her job was that small three hour shift on Saturday.

As for who was involved, the primary people would be the clerk with the transportation dilemma and the front-line supervisor she spoke to initially. However, the situation mushroomed to encircle everyone in the office including all of the clerks and all of the managers. The conflict continued for five to six months because the people involved were being obtuse. Rather than just having all of the stakeholders sit down and hash things out, the "could not" statement was apparently uttered in an echo chamber and the managers seemed hell-bent on making an example out of the employee and the other clerks involved got circled into the fray, whether that is because they thought the carpool clerk was being unreasonable or whether it was that they were rallying around her. Regardless, both sides grossly overreacted and acted in a childish and borderline-violent way. For something so small and basic to cause such a brouhaha is ridiculous on so many levels (Gupta, 2015).

What could have been done and should have been done to diffuse the situation was for the initial manager who was told of the situation to make sure he had a complete understanding of what the employee was saying and why they were saying it. That manager should have been told the next proper party (and ONLY that proper party) the same story ... in full and with all of the relevant details. Indeed, any reasonable person that hears that this poor clerk would have to ride on a bus for five hours for a three-hour shift would certainly (at least they should) see how rather asinine that is and decide that some sort of change or compromise can be figured out so as to avoid the pain point created for the employee.