Earlier this year, when you graduated from college, you were fortunate. You had a job waiting for you at Bart's CartMart INC, the largest distributor of motorized vehicles and accessories in the area. The firm slogan is "Speed Up with Us." Bart (Cartwright), the owner, happens to be your father. That saves having to work your way up. Besides, you've already helped out summers, when you weren't using one of the product's playing golf cart cruising off road or mowing the lawn.

This job has great promise as you're an only child, and your dad has long had it in mind that you would be taking over the business someday. In preparation, you majored in marketing, minored in public relations, and took several elective courses, including one in business law. To start you out full time, your dad put you in charge of customer relations.

 It has been fun and challenging. This first year, you've devised a follow-up program in which you or an assistant called on each customer a week or so before the warranty. For the product purchased expired. You ask whether anything was needed by the customer that you could supply within warranty. Customers praised and liked that attention. And you've had Bart's CartMart sponsor the winners' awards in one of the major competitive events at the annual stock breeders exhibition (motor vehicles as well as plaques and ribbons, of course).

This way, the Annual Harvest Festival is on, and based on a request from the committee running it, you have loaned six used model golf carts for use in the conducting of festival Events. Your father has been most tolerant about your activities. He obviously wants you to enjoy your job and to relish growing with the company. At the same time, Bart is no softie. He fought for his business the hard way. He knows what he wants and is determined to get it. At times he can be tough, if he feels he has to, and even dictatorial.

That's where things stood until this morning. When you got to work, you were handed a morning newspaper by the receptionist. In it the son of a local farmer and Harvest Festival official, was driving one of your carts around late yesterday afternoon for fun. Something happened in the cart tipped over on his leg, mangling it, with possible permanent damage. The kid, in the hospital, told his parents and they told the newspaper Reporter that he "didn't know what happened. He was "just going along fine," when he felt a bump and he couldn't turn the steering wheel.  Next thing he knew, the cart was headed for a big harvest machine. He tried to turn the wheel, but it wouldn't work. The next thing he knew, he was jammed between the cartt and the machine. The newspaper carried a headshot of the kid. He was cute and the story indicated that the cart had been borrowed from Bart's CartMart.

You sought out your father immediately. He said he had gotten a call from the newspaper late in the evening, but there was no reason to disturb you. He had called the kids father and mother, with whom he was acquainted, to express concern and sympathy. They were very upset. When he mentioned to them that these heavy carts weren't really made to be handled by little kids, the father made some critical remarks about lending out used carts that might have something wrong with them.

"I don't like it," your father said to you. "People don't react reasonably when their own flesh and blood is involved. I doubt we've heard the last of it." You ask him what you could do. Should you send someone in the shop with the trailer to bring the car back and have it inspected, send the kid a book to read, arrange to retrieve all the loaned carts, or what? "We shouldn't touch the cart," your father said, "not until I can talk to our lawyer. Just sit tight for a few hours and will know where this thing is going."

 Within the hour, a lawyer called the company to identify himself as representing the injured kid and his family, to say he'd requested the local authorities impound the cart, and to indicate he would want to talk to Bart soon. Also, within the hour, your father had talked to the company's lawyer, the agent of the firm handling the company's insurance, and with the person at the Police Department, who said they would like to hold the cart. His lawyer, he said, would be talking with the legal department for the company who manufactured the cart.

Before the day was over, you and your father talked again in some detail. "This is the kind of thing you dread in a business like this," he told you. "And with so damn many ambulance-chasing lawyers around, good intentions and fair dealings don't come out the way you had in mind. With the news people looking for things to blow up into headlines, I can see this thing heating up into a court case, and a local issue where people who should be minding their own business stick their noses and choose sides."

You assure your father that the good intentions in learning the carts will come out in the end, and that by being open with the news people they'll be fair in whatever they write or say. He says, "We'll see. If you have any ideas about this, come tell me. I welcome them. But, don't go off half-cocked talking with others in the newspaper, the Festival Committee, or the next-door neighbors. Come see me."
 

Bart's CartMart is in trouble and your father wants you to work with the group to identify the main problem and help come up with a solution.
Identify the specific problems in the case and tell me why 1 specific problem you think your group should focus on and why.

• State evidence to prove the problem exists and specifically discuss the consequences. End with a Problem Statement.
• State 3-5 criteria you believe are important to solve the problem. 
  • State 3 questions you would use to help get the group to discuss and establish criteria.
• State 3 possible solutions you have for your specific problem.
  • Be very specific here with your solutions.
  • State 3 questions you would use to help the group brainstorm solutions.
• State which solutions meet all of the criteria and the best choice as a solution. 
  • Discuss why you believe this to be the best choice.