Reference no: EM133373050

Case Study: Emma has worked for a well-known international hotel chain, located in an urban area on a river, for about a year. She is working to pay for her college tuition. She works well with her colleagues and supervisors, and she received a small promotion and a pay raise after six months on the job. She is responsible for customer service, reservations, and training new employees in these areas, including two interns that happen to go to the same college as she does. On one particular day, after an unpleasant conflict with a hotel guest, Emma goes for a walk outside to get some air. During the walk, she observes a bird flying towards a nest under the highway overpass. She notices the tall grass near the edge of the river sway as the wind blew. As she continues to walk along the river, she notices a horrible smell and decides to walk closer to the water.

Upon further investigation, she sees some sort of black ooze running into the river, and she follows it back around to find the source of the foul-smelling substance. She notices a hose leading to a hole with a grate on top of it. The smell is so bad that she can barely stand it, but she is curious about what is causing the odor and why there is a hose running out of the nearby hole in the ground. She feels like she should tell her supervisor about what she found, but then she has second thoughts and wonders if some employees at the hotel were, in fact, responsible for the situation. She realizes that the substance is raw sewage from the hotel bathrooms draining into the river, which is a serious environmental violation.

Question: Emma is conflicted between her social and legal obligations, on one hand, and her loyalty to the hotel and her coworkers, as well as the need to keep the job that she desperately needs to pay the tuition. What should Emma do?