The Lawsuit

Chapter three: Three Early Perspectives on Organizations & Communications

The text says, “We should learn to see each theory as a participant in a larger, ongoing dialect where each conversational thread both reveals and conceals some aspects of organizational life and the larger social milieu in which organizations are located” (p.62).
The theories that are being discussed in the above explanation are considered, “the three P’s of historical writing.”
1. Theories are Partial: Our account tells only part of the story. It’s logically impossible to say everything about anything; new perspectives are always possible, now and into the future.
2. Theories are Partisan: The story we tell is one that we favor. All thought is partisan. Knowledge is shaped by the theories and interpretations we use to make sense of the world.
3. Theories are Problematic: our account asks more questions than it can answer, and the answers it does provide are based on what is currently known rather than on all that could be known.

I can fit these theories into so many incidents that have occurred in my life, but one in particular stands out. I’ll call it the lawsuit. I’ve worked for my current employer for the past 5 years, and we specialize in custom desserts. The company has a well know reputation for the taste and appearance of its products. Now as much praise as we regularly receive from our clientele, it is honest to say that not everyone can be satisfied 100% of the time. So yes, I have dealt with my fair share of complaints.
One day I was on the phones taking care of the invoices and a client called to place an order. The woman on the other end said that she was ordering the dessert for someone else in her office. She told me the name of the dessert she wanted, and I automatically knew what she was referring to—since it was a popular item on the menu. The woman then said, “ I want that cake made with butter cream, not whipped cream.” I explained that that would be no problem in doing so, since the cake is originally made with butter cream anyways. She then said, “This is important because the woman who I am ordering this for can-not have whipped cream.”

Anyways, a few days pass, the dessert is made and delivered, and as my coworker and I are closing up the facility a woman comes in and instantly began to yell at my coworker. I over hear her say that she had eaten our cake and that it was not supposed to be made with butter cream because it contains soy, which she is allergic to, and in a result of this she had had an allergic reaction.
At this point I stepped into the conversation since I knew just the order that she was referring to. Now the problem was that she and I both began to use the three P’s in our conversation. She had indeed eaten the dessert, but she had not been the one who had placed the order. This was a big result of where the partial and partisan developed. She was told that at the time of ordering the dessert, the other woman who placed the order asked that it specifically NOT be made with butter cream—AND the salesperson over the phone (that would be me) guaranteed that the product was not made with soy.

As I explained to this woman how the conversation had actually gone—my attempt for her to understand where this serious problem of her allergic reaction went wrong, she screamed in my face, saying I was a liar. Unfortunately, at this point anything that was going to proceed to come out of my mouth was partisan—in my favor, to make sense in my world. The entire conversation was problematic, because the woman wanted to believe that her coworker was telling her the truth about how the desert had actually been ordered. It was all partial, because I had one side of the story—which made me a “liar,” and the woman had another (that was passed down to her). Each of our stories were partisan, because she wanted me to believe that I had done something wrong-which would mean that she could believe her own story, and I wanted her to believe that my story was the correct format—especially since I remembered the order being placed, and even more importantly because ‘soy products’ were not once mentioned in the conversation between the woman and I over the phone—BECAUSE SOY IS USED I ALL OF OUR DESSERTS.

The entire scenario was problematic, and the woman sued the company. Fortunately myself and the company knew the truth, and we knew that after 20 years of business, and this being the only miscommunication problem that resulted in a lawsuit, then things weren’t so bad. After all, communications problems are bound to happen in the world of business, regardless of how precise you think you are being.