Journal 7c

You are the administrative director of clinical laboratories at Community Hospital. One of your section supervisors has come to you with a complaint about a young man named William, one of the laboratory’s messengers. The supervisor says, “I’m nearing the end of my patience with William, and I need your advice. I can’t pin him down on anything. No matter what happens or how nearly certain I am that he was involved, when it comes down to assigning responsibility he was never there, he knows nothing about it, he didn’t do it, or other employees are trying to make him look bad. No matter what the situation is he’s got an excuse, sometimes a really plausible one, and I can never get him to own up to anything. Even when one of the stops on his rounds get missed, he’s got a long, involved story to account for it, a story I hear about only if I learned about what happened and tried to find out more. To hear William tell it, he’s never made a mistake in his life. But if I could believe him for even a minute, then I’d have to believe that the whole world around him fouls up day after day and tries to lay the blame at his doorstep. Tell me—what can I do about him?

Questions:

1. What advice would you off your section supervisor for addressing the problem of the ever-blameless William?

2. As the section supervisor’s immediate superior, should you become actively involved in dealing with William? Why or why not?