Reference no: EM132820790

Was the Knife a Joke?*

Kendall is a business student at a community college. She missed classes this morning because she was at the local police station reporting an incident. Several days ago, a coworker at her part-time job in the shipping department of a large manufacturing company threatened her with a knife. It took Kendall a while to get up the nerve to report the incident to the police, but her supervisor and her family kept pushing her to do it. Kendall did not want to make a fuss. After all, the guy got fired so she wouldn't see him any- more. And the company is making sure she never leaves the building alone, always being accompanied to her car. Now that she has reported it, though, she feels relieved. When Kendall thinks of it, she's still not sure whether he was joking. He had always teased her, but the teasing had gradually become worse. He started making cracks about stalking her and how he knew the car she drove-he had been watching her. When he pulled out the knife and pushed it against her stomach, he said, "Hey, you're not scared, are you?" Kendall had tried to ignore him up to that point but here she drew the line. She immediately reported the incident to her supervisor who, recognizing the seriousness of the situation, took her to the human resources office. An investigation into the incident confirmed Kendall's report and her "attacker" was fired

1. Why did the supervisor take Kendall to the HR office to have the HR staff deal with this? What if you were the supervisor in this situation and the company was smaller and had no HR department- what would you do then?

2. The inappropriate "teasing" continued for a long time before the knife incident. Comment on Kendall choosing avoidance as her way of dealing with it. Was this right? What other ways could she have dealt with it? What could a supervisor have done to prevent this kind of behaviour in the first place, or to encourage employees not to "ignore" it until it got this bad?

3. Consider specific examples of unacceptable behaviour you have observed in employees in your own experiences. How did the supervisor react? What was the result of the supervisor's actions? How could the circumstances have been handled better? Share these examples with others and discuss.

4. What resolution technique(s) did Kendall's co-worker use? What effect did this have on Kendall?"