Workplace Dilemma

br Work Place Dilemma

Alegria worked as a supervisor at the local branch office of the Grand Insurance office . She was responsible for a 12 person team in charge of the funeral benefits processing section . The team , composed of regular employees and some contractual workers who were hired to help speed up the clearing of backlog in the claims was friendly and close knit . She treated her subordinates as her equals in the office , as her friends after office hours . Hence , the demarcation line between her office authority and friendship with these

people became blurred

One Friday night , she had to stay late at the office and caught a few of them in the act of a drinking session . It was already 7

.M . when she left her office and heard a rowdy noise emanating from one of the modular cubicles . Since she was the only person of authority left on that floor of the building , it was her command responsibility to check out the situation . She caught a group of her subordinates visibly enjoying a drinking party . A number of them were obviously drunk as evidenced by the way they answered her during her impromptu questioning One of them in particular , Ruby , a contractual employee was so drunk that she was starting to act lasciviously and answered in a highly disrespectful manner denoting the that the woman did not recognize the authority of Alegria as her supervisor within office premises . Office policy prohibit 's the act of drinking within the premises and any employee caught doing so would face administrative sanctions . For a contractual employee , it meant immediate dismissal once the charges are proven

If Alegria chose to turn a blind eye to what she witnessed and the higher authorities found out , she would be dismissed along with these people because of her negligence in a situation that required command responsibility . Since this was a group that Alegria considered friends she decided to try and give Ruby and the others in the group a chance to redeem themselves before she took more serious action against them . Come Monday morning , she issued several memos to the people involved and asked them to explain why she should not report them to the division chief for prompt disciplinary action . The memo was simply ignored and tossed aside , fuelling Alegria 's need to investigate the matter further . Investigations indicated that the drinking was an almost regular event with Ruby as the person who supplied the alcoholic drinks and dared employees to break company policy . The maintenance crew of the building attested to the regularity of the activity by presenting Alegria with videos of the drinking sprees wherein some of the maintenance people were involved in the after office drinking as well

Upon her realization of how long the activity had been going on under her nose , Alegria was left with no other choice but to a formal report with the division chief and allowing the equivalent disciplinary actions to take place...