Eastown Hardware Case

During the Labor Day weekend, our company is facing a understaffed problem. Based on the last year experience about the sales number and other conditions, like economic conditions, I made a forecast of the sales for this weekend. This forecast is for manager to plan the inventory and the staffing level, and schedule events. The forecast that manger did was 10% downward than last year. However, on the first day of the weekend, Eastown Hardware did 30% more business than I expected. The problem is how to schedule the next three days of the weekend. We have to decide if it is still that many people to come or it would go back to what I predicted.

The solution the solve the understaffed problem is to called Mitch who is the 19-year veteran in Eastown Hardware even though he would have the weekend off and would resent by having disrupted his relaxing weekend. Moreover, if the business goes back to what the manager predicted, we have to paying him salary without doing any job, at the same time, others employees would doubt my judgment and working abilities.

In my opinion, I do not think I should call in Mitch to work the weekend, since I have already told him he would have the weekend off. It would affect the relationship and honesty between him and me anyways. Also, I think if we change our prediction in the middle of the weekend, it would show our unconfident to our boss. What boss need from us are trust, reliability and cooperation. It would affect the reliability from boss to us. We have to be responsible to both boss and employees.

I think if the Labor Day weekend goes back to what we expect, Nicholas and I could able to handle the work by ourselves. On the other hand, if Eastown Hardware keeps having way more business than I planned for. Nicholas has to work more than usual and I would pay him more for the extra work he did. I think this is the best way to solve the problem. In relationship wise, I would not lose the confidence from my boss