MODULE 1: CHOOSING AN ORGANIZATION 1

Module 1

OGL 481

May 22, 2020

Kristen Neuhausel

Arizona State University

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Organization Chosen

The organization I choose is Starbucks Coffee Company. I chose Starbucks because I

have worked for this company for eight years and have had most of my working career with this

company. Starbucks is a well-known company that purchases and roasts high quality coffees

and sells them in various different forms such as espresso beverages, blended beverages, brewed

coffee and much more. Starbucks operates over 30,000 stores in 80 different markets. My role

in this organization is a Store Manager of a retail store.

Situation

Disclaimer: For the purpose of this assignment, I will be changing the names of the

parties involved and I would also appreciate professionalism in regard to how one would use the

events of this story in the future. Thank you!

Like I mentioned above, I am a store manager for my Starbucks location and am

generally in charge of all operations that happen in the store, both operationally and

managerially. I was faced with a situation where I had to have some really tough conversations

and lean into my own leadership.

At the time of this situation, I recently took over a new team and was co-managing with

another store manager to ensure a smooth transition of leadership. This manager and I are really

close and work incredibly well together. I was sitting in the back office when I saw a lot of

whispering and I noticed something was going on. While trying to remain professional and

honestly, not nosey, I stayed out of it. It wasn’t until things got really intense that my co-

manager finally said something to me. He said, “I really do not want to do anything at this

point, but Ian is dating a guy that I cheated on my husband with and he is telling our entire team

all about it”. He was concerned that his personal life is being brought into his professional life
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and that the team would look at him differently and lose respect for him. In that moment, I

honestly was just in shock for a lot of reasons and my brain was spinning as to what my

approach will be. I thought to myself, “does this violate a policy?” “what is being said and is it

sexual harassment?” “Is what he is saying true and actually happening in the store?” and “how

do we get this to stop while protecting all the parties involved?”. I thought my next course of

action was to ask more questions. I talked to Jake (my co-manager) and asked him how he

found this out. He said that a partner (employee) came to him because he thought he should

know and that it was making some other partners feel uncomfortable. I was torn between

respecting Jake’s request by not perusing it any further and starting an investigation and put an

end to the behavior.

I also was asking myself, “Is this just workplace drama or something bigger?”. I realized

that the right thing to do is take care of the team as a whole and make sure that the environment

and culture of the store is protected so I launched an investigation. I called into our ethics and

compliance team and let them know all that I knew. I also knew that this would upset Jake that I

did not respect his wishes and that I had to have a conversation with him; and I did. I was very

transparent with him and told him all the reasons why I needed to start an investigation. That I

wanted to protect him and show the team that this kind of behavior is not tolerated in our

workplace.

The investigation consisted of gathering several statements from partners whom Ian

talked to about Jake. I asked the partner who came to me with this information to give me a list

of everyone she knew that was aware of this situation. I then went to each partner who said that

Ian talked to them and had them write down exactly what he said to them as best as they could

remember. In these statements, I also found out that there were inappropriate pictures being
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shown as well. Then, I sent all of these statements to the ethics team and they took the

investigation from there. They reached out to Jake to get statements from him and finally, from

Ian to get his side of the story.

The team eventually reached out to me and asked me about any other incidents like this

about Ian. There had not been, but he did have some corrective actions in the past. The team

decided that it was not a violation of the sexual harassment policy, but it was against the

“gossiping in the workplace” policy and that their recommendation was to put him on a final

written warning. Honestly, I was really upset by this. I felt like it was clear sexual harassment

and I was really shocked that we weren’t going to go forward with separation. I wanted to show

my team that this isn’t the culture that I wanted for my store and instead it would be a culture of

celebration, team work and inspiring each other. So, I did feel a little defeated. However, I had

to put my emotions aside and try to be as objective as possible.