How Do You Solve a Problem Like Marcus?

Abstract

This case follows Heather Grant as she begins her new role as manager of the Staunton, Virginia, branch of Loom & Ferris, a mid-sized call center specializing in printing, branding, and logos for corporate clients. As the new manager, Grant's role is to increase morale among her employees and to improve sales and productivity. She decides to spend her first week observing the call center and getting to know her new employees before making any decisions. Her arrival is not welcome to most of her employees, and she knows that because the company's sales are falling, she may have to fire some of them. Marcus Feeny, one of the employees, arrives late and unruly on Grant's first day, of which she takes notice. She recognizes him because he has the best sales numbers of anyone in the branch by far. Throughout the week, she observes Feeny to be consistently late, unkempt, and disruptive to his colleagues. His bad attitude does not go unnoticed by his colleagues. After a heated argument between Feeny and another employee, Grant calls him into her office to speak with him. She brings up his behavior and appearance at work, and he is immediately defensive and brings up his sales numbers. She recognizes that he sees himself as in the right, even though his colleagues believe that he is getting special treatment by being allowed to flout the office rules. At the end of her first week, Grant realizes that she will have to let some employees go to keep the branch afloat. She must decide the best course of action and whether or not Feeny should stay. Excerpt UVA-OB-1310 Sept. 18, 2020 How Do You Solve a Problem Like Marcus? Heather Grant spent all week preparing for her new job. She had just been appointed manager of the Staunton, Virginia, branch of Loom & Ferris, a midsized call center that specialized in printing, branding, and logos for large or small corporate clients. She would be starting in a week and wanted to make sure that her transition into the team went as seamlessly as possible. This was her first big promotion to a head position, and after working her way up the ladder for 15 years, she finally thought she had turned her life around. When Grant was young, she had fallen in with the wrong crowd and ended up incarcerated for shoplifting. At that time she knew her life could have gone either all the way down or nowhere but up. She couldn't help but remember the days when she thought everyone in her life had forsaken her until her first boss Marie, a salon owner, had given her a chance. From there Grant had pulled herself up by the bootstraps, slowly making her way up from her secretarial job. Once she was employed by Loom & Ferris, she worked hard, often staying late to review sales reports, and striving to keep clients happy. She listened to business strategies at meetings, volunteered to help company managers, and over time learned the ins and outs of the company's business. Finally the time and work she put in paid off with a promotion, and now she was in a position to help shape other people's lives as well. . . .