unnecessary distraction.
His phone rang, and it was Sue Bradley, the sales vice president, who was inquiring about the status of a rush order for one of the company’s important clients. Steve promised to look into the matter and get back to her later in the day with an answer. Steve had delegated the rush order last week to Lucy Adams, one of his production supervisors, and he had not thought about it since then. Stepping back into the outer office, Steve asked Ruth if she had seen Lucy today. Ruth reminded him that Lucy was at a training workshop in California. She would be difficult to reach until the session ended late in the afternoon, because the workshop facilitators regard cell phone calls and text messages as an unnecessary distraction.
Going back into his office, Steve emailed a message to Lucy asking her to call him as soon as possible. Then, he resumed his search for the memo about the meeting with his boss and the other production managers. He finally found it in his large collection of unprocessed emails. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss a proposed change in quality control procedures. By now it was 9:25, and there was no time to read the proposal. He hurried out to get to the meeting on time. During the meeting, the other production managers participated in the discussion and made helpful comments or suggestions. Steve was not prepared for the meeting and did not contribute much except to say that he did not anticipate any problems with the proposed changes.
The meeting ended at 10:30 and Steve returned to his office, where he found Paul Chen, one of his production supervisors, waiting for him. Paul wanted to discuss a problem caused in the production schedules by a major equipment breakdown. Steve called Glenda Brown, his assistant manager, and asked her to join them to help rearrange the production schedules for the next few days. Glenda came in shortly and the three of them worked on the production schedules. At 11:25, Ruth came in to announce that Mr. Ferris was waiting and he claimed to have an appointment with Steve at 11:30. Steve looked at his calendar but could not find any entry for the appointment. Steve asked Ruth to tell Mr. Ferris that he would be ready shortly.
