50 Case Studies for Management and Supervisory Training

37

Case 7

Mary Corey

Background Information

Mary Corey recently completed her fourth year with Statewide Services Corpora-

tion. In her position as customer support specialist, she consistently received high

performance evaluations—until recently. Indeed, her most recent evaluation, com-

pleted three weeks ago, rated her as “less than satisfactory.” Her supervisor, Helen

Rowe, wondered why this previously strong employee had fallen so quickly.

Helen had just returned from a meeting with her boss, Betty Allen, when again

the subject of Mary came up. Betty suggested that Helen look through Mary’s past

work records to try to find some clues about what happened and what they should

do now.

Helen closed the door to her office, sat at her desk, and pulled Mary’s personnel

folder from her desk drawer. As she flipped through the materials in the folder,

Mary’s story came into better focus:

About six months ago, around Christmastime, Mary started taking longer

lunch breaks. Given the cramped quarters in which Helen’s Customer Sup-

port Department worked and the demanding routines they had to follow, it

was easy to notice Mary stretching her regular lunch period by 10 or 15

minutes. Once she even stretched it for a full 25 minutes. Since it was the

holiday season, Helen took no specific action. However, her occasional

remarks reminding Mary of the lunch break schedules would produce an

uncharacteristically evasive, defensive response from Mary. On at least two

occasions, she nodded off to sleep at her desk after returning from lunch.

In January and February, she was 10 to 20 minutes late for work on six dif-

ferent days and called in sick on four other days. It was during this time that

Mary’s dealings with her coworkers deteriorated. Normally quiet yet socia-

ble, Mary became increasingly short-tempered and given to periodic out-

bursts of anger and belligerence. Since Mary, 36, was a single mother of

two teenage girls, almost everyone in the office assumed there was some-

thing going on at home.

On February 23

rd

, though, things took a disturbing turn. Mary left for lunch

at her usual time, but did not return. She called in three hours later to say

she had gone home because she had suddenly become ill. Her speech

seemed slurred, somehow not quite right. She returned to work two days

later, with a doctor’s note explaining she had been sick with a stomach flu.

Nonetheless, the pattern of lateness continued. Two weeks later, Helen gave

Mary her first written disciplinary notice regarding her attendance and

punctuality. During the discussion, Mary confessed to Helen: “I know I’ve