Elizabeth Faull

Jan 15, 2023

OGL 481 Pro-Seminar I

PCA-Choosing an Organization Worksheet

CONFIDENTIAL

1) Describe your organization.

The organization I have chosen to analyze is my current employer, Bowlero Corporation.

Bowlero Corp. was founded in 1997 under Tom Shannon. Shannon acquired a run-down,

financially strapped Bowlmor AMF in Greenwich Village and transformed it into a popular

nightlife venue, changing bowling forever. In 2013, Bowlmor Lanes purchased AMF Bowling

Worldwide to become the largest owner and operator of bowling centers in the world. One year

later, they expanded further by launching Bowlero and purchasing Brunswick. The move created

a trifecta of the most famous names into one unified family of brands. The history of Bowlero

Corporation begins with one of the most famous names in bowling, AMF. AMF was founded in

1900 as American Machine and Foundry Company Inc in New York. Over the years, AMF has

been involved in many different interests, but through it all, its commitment to bowling has

remained first.

This is clear, being an employee of the organization. My district has tried to improve its

employee relations, however, I have seen that no matter what the corporate teams try to instill, if

upper management that is working with the teams on a day-to-day basis is not fully executing the

company's visions, they are failing the organization and corporate is failing themselves by not

doing more regular in-person check-ins. What is even worse, is when upper management knows

who and what is failing, and other managers seem to ignore the problem and move the managers
to other centers without fully addressing the issue. I enjoy my job as much as I do because of

how much I get to learn from it, of both what to do and what not to do, so now the question

becomes how much longer do I put myself through this before explore other career paths. I am

using this assignment to not only help me understand the bigger picture of my situation but also

gain some outside perspective through my peers.

2) Describe how Describe your role in the organization

Given the small background of the organization I addressed and deciding what role

would be best in how to approach the specific situation described in the next question, I will

remain here what I am at work: Operations Supervisor. Being an operations supervisor is not

much different than my previous position, shift leader, except now I qualify for bonuses as well

as employees can review my performance as a manager. It is an internal role and one that I feel I

can still have a full picture of the situation that occurred.

3) Describe the situation.

The situation in which I was put into only a couple of weeks ago follows perfectly with

the assignment and has everything to do with the perspectives: structural issues, HR, political

issues, and symbolic issues.

To set the scene, it was a busy full house Friday night, with a short staff big parties in

addition to our open play. A reservation that was seated by the bar was supposed to have a

server, “Amber”. Our bartender who is very protective of the bar, tips, and started to not be a

team player, was working the bar that night, “Roxy”. Roxy had scared Amber off of the bar

before and so that night when I asked Amber where she was serving, the party or open tables, she
replied, “Open tables”. I was unaware of the conversation she and my GM had about her

working for the party. Amber had served almost half of the party before we had this

conversation.

The situation boils down to when the party left a tip. He left a tip that was quite large to

be split between the staff who worked for the party. He left $100 to the server and bartender and

then $50 each to the two kitchen staff. I was not there for the discussion of how he was splitting

the tip, that occurred with my GM and the contact as there was a form that had to be filled out

and I had not split a credit card tip before. The bartender felt that she deserved all of the tips as

she worked “the whole party”. This was not the case as the cooks worked the party as well as

Amber until Roxy scared her off of the bar, which I was not there to see that day but was aware

of the conflict between them. Roxy also felt that I should be on her side when I was just being

partial to what the contact wanted. Roxy ended up walking out mid-shift and was angry with

what happened.

Where it gets even better, after all the drama and my feeling guilty for her walking out, I

forgot to claim the tip and it was transferred to the front desk attendant where it got $0 tip. My

GM had me call the contact to get the tip redone so we could claim it and he never ended up

coming in to redo the tip. Thank goodness at the GM meeting, the district VP said we could still

give the tip to the staff through a payout, but I would not be in trouble for the tip not being

claimed.

This situation involves structural issues through the hierarchy of leadership and steps to fix the

situation, political issues through conflict and “alliances” between staff members, HR issues

through the employee's fair treatment and the way the situation was handled, and symbolic issues

between personal relationships and what really happened in each person's perspective.
References

Reframing leadership final. Formsite. (n.d.). Retrieved January 15, 2023, from

http://fs25.formsite.com/josseybass/form29/index.html