Lesikar's Business Communication: Connecting in a Digital World 13th Edition by Kathryn Rentz,Paula Lentz

Exercise 47

You are a supervisor in the Marketing Department at Plytec Plastics. You and four others have been working on a campaign for a company product that will be released in three months. Today is Wednesday. Because your boss, the manager of the Marketing Department, needs a week to prepare the presentation of the campaign to the board of directors, she has asked for the campaign materials by Monday of next week. You and the rest of your team have known about the deadline for three months. This morning you received a message from Mary, the graphic artist, saying that there is no way she can finish her portion of the project by Monday. She says she can have the project finished by Thursday and is requesting an extension. In her message she says she has been swamped with work for two other projects. In addition, her children have been sick this week with colds, so she has had to take time off to care for them, and she is hosting a birthday party for one of her children on Sunday, so she cannot work over the weekend to finish her part of the project.
You talk to your boss, who says she cannot wait until Thursday for Mary's work. To be honest, neither can you, as it reflects poorly on your leadership and supervisory abilities if you cannot deliver a team project on time. Your boss's calendar is so busy that she really needs a full week to get her presentation ready for the board, and if her presentation is not excellent, the entire department appears incompetent. Mary has had three months to get her work done, and many times-just yesterday, as a matter of fact-you have seen her on Facebook or on personal phone calls when she should have been working on the project. She was also late with her work for the last project you worked on together, and you are a bit annoyed that this is happening again.
You are thinking that since you have two other graphic artists in the department, you will ask one of them to work with you on future projects. You know for sure that if Mary does not have her material ready by Monday, you will be talking about Mary's inability to meet deadlines in her performance and salary review next month. Though you plan to talk with Mary in person, you also want a permanent record of your decision, so you decide to write a message to Mary denying her request for an extension and offering at least one suggestion for what she might do to meet her deadline.