Comfort Zone is a 60-bed, for-profit intermediate care facility in northern California. The reha-bilitative department manager, Jamie Richards, has been working at Comfort Zone for only 6months. She holds monthly staff meetings, as well as additional individual meetings with staff toaddress specific patient-related issues. On most days, she eats lunch in a quiet corner of the cafe-teria so that she can catch up on her paperwork at the same time.Catherine Williams, one of her staff members who has been working at the facility for morethan 25 years, spotted her in the cafeteria one day and sat down uninvited. Catherine has neverattended any of the monthly meetings and always has an excuse for not attending. Catherinesaid, "I've been waiting to tell you this ever since you began working here, but I wanted you to getadjusted first. Now we can finally talk. I have been here for a long time and have seen all kinds ofcomings and goings."Catherine proceeded to tell Jamie about her staff who were constantly tardy or absent. Shealso told Jamie about the things the staff had been doing behind her back, such as using the Inter-net for personal matters, going shopping during lunch hour and coming back late, and going homeearly without permission. Catherine concluded with, "At your monthly meetings, the staff showEnd-of-Chapter Case Studies9963831_CH04_2ndpass.qxd:Borkowski 12/1/09 1:32 PM Page 99 100WORKPLACECOMMUNICATIONup to tell you that everything's just fine, when I know differently. I'm too busy working to attendthese meetings. If you want my opinion, I would fire them all since they are incompetent.
"DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. How should Jamie deal with the information that Catherine provided?
2. What do you think of Jamie's methods of communicating with her staff?
3. Do you think that she should use a different form of communication with Catherine?