OGL 481 Pro-Seminar I:

PCA-Choosing an Organization Worksheet

Worksheet Objectives:
1. Identify an organization and situation you want to study over the remainder of the course.
2. Describe the organization and the situation

Complete the following making sure to support your ideas and cite from the textbook and other
course materials per APA guidelines. After the peer review, you have a chance to update this and
format for your Electronic Portfolio due in Module 6.

1) Name and describe your organization.

My personal case analysis is about the time that I worked at United Supermarkets.
There was one family that owned stores in different states. One was owned and operated
by a part of the family in the state of Oklahoma, and the group of stores that I worked for
was owned by another part of the family out of Lubbock, Texas. This company took
pride in its motto, “The Personal Touch”, requiring all employees to talk to and
acknowledge every customer that walked through the doors. Going even further by
having all customers' groceries be bagged and cared out by the employees; without
expecting to get tips for taking out the groceries or paying a fee for this service. The
family that owned over 100 stores, based out of Texas, would visit every single store at
least twice a year keeping the vision of the company in the minds of the employees.

2) Describe your role in the organization (it can be an internal or external role).

After starting out as a sacker, who bagged the groceries, I worked my way up to
part-time Front End Manager. Each department had its own managers and all were
overseen by the main store manager whose assistants worked in the front of the store. I
was one of the lowest level assistant managers in the front and would not get higher while
in high school and college. My 1st task would be to take care of the customers and in
order to do that, I had to organize the employees, in the front, taking care of their needs
and the needs of the store so they could focus on the customers.

3) Describe the situation, including information you think the will help the reader
understand the most important elements of the situation. (This will require
selectivity: part of the art of case writing is separating the essential facts from the
mass of information that might be included).

1
 The situation that I found myself in came in the first few weeks of being a Front
Eng Manager. The Service Manager was the one that promoted me, saying she felt I
would do the best in helping her get her duties done. This came as a shock to many of the
full-time employees who had worked at the store for many years at this point. Even
though as a sacker, service counter staff, and stocker they treated me how I treated them,
with the utmost respect for each other. I kept in mind to manage as the Service Manager
did, she had a great way of managing, keeping everyone happy, on task, and able to
handle any situation.
However, as I came to remind the front end staff to go on break or while helping
them with a problem I was met with angry stares and resistance to being told to perform a
task. I kept calm and tried not to use an angry tone when I would have to reinforce my
delegation of duties. After all, most of them were older than me and were people that I
respected personally and professionally. I had managers who would lead with a heavy
hand and others that would lead with encouragement, I wanted to be the latter. I had to
show them I would not be heavy-handed but I would also expect the team to not suffer
because of their disdain for my promotion.