Message Strategies: Persuasive Business Messages

[LO-3] The following persuasive request for adjustment contains numerous flaws. Read the message carefully and analyze its faults. Then determine whether to use the direct or indirect approach and write an improved message.

March 22, 2015 Mr. Robert Bechtold, ManagerKukyendahl Joint, Inc.88 North Park RoadHouston, TX 77005 Re: Last Warning Dear Mr. Bechtold:

Enclosed is a summary of recent ETS-related court cases in which landlords and owners were held responsible for providing toxin-free air for their tenants. In most of these cases, owners were also required to reimburse rents and pay damages for the harm done before the environmental tobacco smoke problem was remedied.

We’ve been plagued with this since we moved in on January 2, 2012. You haven’t acted on our complaints, or responded to our explanations that secondhand smoke is making us sick, filtering in from nearby offices. You must act now or you will be hearing from our lawyers. We’ve told you that we were forced to hire contractors to apply weather stripping and seal openings. This cost us $3,000 (bills attached) and we expect reimbursement. But the smoke is still coming in. We also want a refund for the $9,000 we’ve paid you in rent since January. Call us immediately at (832)

768-3899, or our attorneys will be calling you.

Cigarette smoke from tenants on either side of us, and perhaps above and below as well, has been infiltrating our space and you have done nothing, despite our pleas, to stop it. This is unacceptable. This is a known human carcinogen. Ask the Environmental Protection Agency, which classified it as this Group A toxin. It causes lung, breast, cervical, and endocrine cancer in nonsmokers.

You wouldn’t want to breathe it, either.

One employee already quit who suffered from asthma.

Another is threatening because he’s a high risk for heart attack. Migraines, bronchitis, respiratory infections—all caused by the 4,600 chemicals in ETS, including poisons such as cyanide, arsenic, formaldehyde, carbon monoxide, and ammonia. We’ve had them all—the illnesses, that is.

Secondhand smoke is even more dangerous than what smokers inhale, since the inhalation process burns off some of the toxins. Sick time has already cost CMSI valuable business and lowered productivity. Plus many of us are considering finding other jobs unless our office air becomes safe to breathe again. But as the court cases prove, the responsibility for fixing this problem is yours.

We expect you to live up to that responsibility immediately.

Frankly, we’re fed up with your lack of response.

Kathleen Thomas Manager