Christine Bancroft is a twenty-five-year-old blonde with a face and a figure that some of her male colleagues thought seemed better suited to the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue than Advertising Age. After spending her first three months as an analyst at the privately held advertising boutique Scot Wayne More, sitting in her cubicle doing research on the Hispanic market, she looked forward to the day she would have a chance to wow clients with the finely honed marketing skills she had acquired while pursuing her MBA at Northwestern University.

Christine knew that Allen Scot and Bart Wayne had a reputation for entertaining clients from out of town at San Francisco’s all-male Pacific Union Club, so she was pleasantly surprised when Allen asked her to join him and Bart for lunch with Andrew Wise at the World Trade Club. Wise was an account executive from the Cincinnati headquarters of Quinn & Inder, the second-largest consumer products firm in the United States. At first, Christine thought that she’d been invited to discuss their plans to extend their reach into the Hispanic youth market. But when she asked Bart how she might best prepare for the meeting, he just smiled and said, “Just wear that little black dress you wore at the firm’s holiday party and leave the talking to Allen and me. Andrew asked for California, so we’re giving him California.”

What should Christine do? What would you do if you were head of human resources for Scot Wayne More and overheard the conversation between Bart and Christine while waiting in Allen’s office to go over an offer letter for a new hire? [Inspired in part by Joseph L. Badaracco, Jr., Defining Moments: When Managers Must Choose Between Right and Right (1997).]