Alan is an operations supervisor at a regional distribution center for a large online consumer-goods shopping website. He enjoys his position and sees it as an important job on the path to attaining his long-range goal of becoming the vice president of logistics (the movement of goods) at his present company or another one. Alan perceives himself to be a high-tech professional who relies on constant communication to get his job done. "You won't find me using dinosaur technologies around the office," says Alan. "I'm totally connected." A few of Alan's coworkers and his boss wonder sometimes if Alan isn't pushing his fascination with communication technology too far. When Alan attends a physical meeting with his group, he keeps his smartphone at hand and his laptop open. He usually begins the meeting with a statement to the effect, "As I tweeted you folks early this morning, here is what we need to accomplish today." Kim, one of the logistics specialists in Alan's group, commented to a friend, "Yesterday, Alan was walking down the hall and was about twenty feet from my cubicle. He had something important to tell me about a misplaced shipment. So he sends me a text message instead of just entering my cubicle. I received his text message about two hours later because of a delay on the server. Alan was upset that I didn't respond more quickly to his message." Alan believes the workers should receive frequent feedback on performance rather than wait for the year-end review. To provide feedback to the members of his department, Alan relies mostly on posting messages on Facebook and sending tweets. A recent Facebook post to one worker was "Good job on verifying the identity of the mysterious customer, but why did it take you so long?" A recent tweet to another worker was "U updated address database gr8. U r totally Superwoman." QUESTIONS 7.11 To what extent are the people criticizing Alan simply out of touch with modern technology? 7.12 What suggestions might you have for Alan to improve his use of communication technology in the office? 7.13 How might Alan improve his written communication skills in order to qualify for the position of vice president of logistics?