BUSINESS WRITING

The case of the inspired genius and the idiot savant.

You are the newly appointed supervisor of a data-entry section of a pharmaceutical company.  You have two shifts with 24 data-entry clerks on each shift.  Your company has a competitive research and development department that is involved in creating and testing drugs; most of the data entry concerns entering the data from experiments with the drugs and testing of the drugs.  Accuracy is paramount; speed is desirable.

Most of your clerks are graduates of for-profit technical schools and have certificates in computer literacy and keyboarding.  Their keyboarding speeds are between 30 and 45 words per minute, although a few can type 60 words a minute.  To make up for absences and resignations, you often use a temp agency to fill in the 24 data-entry stations.  One day, two of the temps prove to be exceptional.  One is an idiot savant with nimble fingers and a gift for remembering lines of data that would be meaningless to anyone else.  He routinely types 100 words a minute and never makes a mistake.  His only fault is that he doesn’t keep track of time and has to be told to take breaks and to keep away from the machines during that time.  The other is a young woman with a genius IQ.  She is shy but is a friend of the idiot savant, and they always sit in adjoining cubicles.  She can type 80 words a minute and is such a fast reader and a perfectionist double-checker that if she makes a mistake, she immediately notices it and corrects it.  However, she is inspired to create virtual reality fantasy games, and if an inspiration penetrates her consciousness, she feels compelled to sketch the idea on the computer.  Between the two of them, they produce as much work as any five of the other employees.

You have succeeded in your job because you are a strict nonconsequentialist; for you “a rule is a rule” and you expect everyone to abide by the rules. You are famous for enforcing time and work proscriptions.  You have a problem because your two most productive clerks are not following the rules.  The idiot savant misses breaks and end times and is on the clock for more than the prescribed 32 hours a week for temps.  Meanwhile, the genius sometimes passes some of her work to her friend so she can create fantasy game sketches which she saves to a flash drive that none of the clerks are supposed to bring into the area for corporate security reasons.  You know that if one temp is forced out, the other will go, too.

What should you do?

• 1.        Find a way to make the savant time conscious and the genius comply with the rule that clerks cannot use their computers for unassigned personal work or pass assigned work to another clerk without your approval.
• 2.       Provide rewards for their compliance with the rules: candies and cookies.
• 3.       Request the temp agency not to send them again because they will never fit into your system.
• 4.       Get some of your more dependable regular employees to apply peer pressure and act as mentors to the two temps in order to have them adjust to the company rules.
• 5.       Convince the savant to stay and provide an alarm watch that buzzes when he should take breaks and again when he should return from breaks and again when he should wrap up work for the day.  Let his friend go because she is uncontrollable.
• 6.       Begin the termination process as proscribed: 

a.       talk to the employees about their violation of rules;

b.      if they don’t comply, send them a warning memo;

c.       if the violations continue, send them a letter with copies to your department head and human resources;

d.      if the violations continue, let them go. 

You have done your duty.

• 7.       For the sake of productivity, ignore their violation of rules.  Pay the savant for the extra hours he works and let the genius sketch out her ideas and save them.  Although you will have violated your own standards, you will be rewarded for the increased productivity.
• 8.       Threaten to resign your position if those two continue to work for the company.
• 9.       Consult human resources and training and ask them to come up with a way to convince your two “stars” to comply with the rules.
• 10.   Explain the situation to the department head and ask for advice.

In a brief essay, explain your choices and why you made them.