Case Study

1. THE LOGISTICS COMPANY

Most courier and cargo companies, when they send their consignments (load in their
language) to a particular station, do it with advance intimation by way of sending an E-
mail (pre-alert message in their language). ABC Logistics was no exception to this
procedure. Whenever they sent their load by evening flight to Mumbai, they sent a pre-
alert to Mumbai giving details of the load like flight number, total number of bags, total
weight of the bags etc. The night-duty airport executive at Mumbai Airport used to
retrieve the load and confirm the receipt of the load to the Bangalore office.

The arrangement worked fine for months. Airport executives got the pre-alert message
and after retrieval of the load, confirmed the receipt of the load.

On one night, Satish who was on night-duty at the Mumbai airport, observed that neither
had any pre-alert been received from Bangalore nor had the Bangalore office sent any
load to them. He tried calling the Bangalore office. But it was well past midnight and
there was no response. The security guard on duty answered that all the staff had left.
Satish knew that Ravi generally worked in the night shift. He tried calling Ravi ’s mobile
number but it was switched off.

Satish had no other option except calling the Asst Manager Operations of Bangalore ,
Charles. Charles tried contacting Ravi too but Ravi ’s mobile was off.

This was a perplexing situation. Charles was concerned about what had happened. He
tried calling other operations staff to find out if anybody knew Ravi’s address. But no one
did. Charles was in a dilemma. Should he defer the matter for early morning the next day
or settle it right away? After deliberating for a couple of minutes, he chose the latter.

As a last resort, Charles called Hari, an HR Executive. Charles explained the situation to
Hari and told him to go to the office and find Ravi’s address from Ravi’s personal
documents. By this time it was 01:30 hours and Hari was aghast to hear that he had to go
to office in the dead of night.

Reluctantly, Hari went to the office and got Ravi’s address. He then confirmed the
address to Charles.

Charles had no option but to commute 15 KM to Ravi’s house. He reached Ravi ’s home
at 02:15 hours.

For Ravi , it was a strange experience to find his manager was knocking on his door well
past midnight. When questioned why he had not send the pre-alert Ravi replied, “Very
simple, today there was excess booking by other logistics companies and there was no
space. So the cargo officials of all airlines refused to accept our load. And since no load
was connected, I did not send a pre-alert either. However, I have done bookings for the
morning flights and load will be delivered in the morning.”

Charles was infuriated by his answer. But fate had a little more frustration in store for
him. While returning from Ravi ’s house, the night duty patrol cops caught him driving
his two-wheeler without a license.

Read the case study carefully and write a note on the communication issues
involved.

2. Barry is a manager at a restaurant. Employees working here range in age from 16 to 55

years. In addition, they come from diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Also for many,
English is not the primary language. In fact several are only learning English now.

Barry tries his best to keep up with food safety standards in the kitchen but it’s not easy.

Employees do receive “on the job training” about food safety basics (for example, appropriate
hygiene, time/temperature, and cleaning and sanitizing). But with high turnover, training is
often rushed and sometimes new employees are put right into the job without training if it is a
busy day. The owners of the restaurant are generally supportive of Barry but they also know
that if a food safety lapse ever happens in their restaurant, it will put them out of business.

One day Barry comes in to work a little late. When he walks into the kitchen he notices several
trays of uncooked meat lying around. It appears these have been sitting there for some time.
Barry is very frustrated and doesn’t know what to do.

He has made many efforts to get employees to be safe in how they handle food. He has also
recently put huge signboards all over the kitchen with these words: KEEP HOT FOOD HOT AND
COLD FOOD COLD and WASH YOUR HANDS ALWAYS AND OFTEN.

At this point Barry spots one of the new recruits. He calls him over and asks him to recall the
food-safety steps he has discussed with them the previous day. The new man looks blankly at
Barry and says, "I have no idea."
Question:

What do you think are the kinds of communication barriers Barry faces? Is there any
specific kind of communication barrier he should especially pay attention to?