Jan joined your company twenty years ago as an intern in her sophomore year of college. She

dropped out of college when your company offered her a full$-$time job. She has been with the

company longer than any other employee and has knowledge of projects from years ago that is

considered invaluable to the company.

At your company, the government requires that a certain percentage of the company$$s

engineers have college degrees. This is due to contractual work for the government. Jan does

not have one.

Jan$$s work has been declining over the last ten years $$ ever since the birth of her twins. She

refuses to work extra hours and her work lacks a good work ethic. She has become disruptive

in her current project work. Overall, her work of late would be considered average at best, but

more likely subpar.

She complains constantly and has a negative view of the company. She openly criticizes her

coworkers and her boss. Lately she has been having mood swings at work and spends a lot of

time on her cellphone. Her coworkers have tried to ignore these issues, but she is now actively

undermining the work of the team. Some worry that she may turn violent.

Many coworkers in her work group are some of Jan$$s closest friends. They stick up for her

whenever she acts out $$ like she did at a recent team meeting.

In the past she was considered an outstanding worker. She used to be eager to learn and her

work was always on time and well done. When first hired, she was expected to move up in the

company rapidly. She has many close friends in the company both in management and in the

rank$-$and$-$file. Consequently, Management and HR decided to have a meeting with her to

address her recent issues.

When asked by management at this meeting over her recent behavior, she stated that she feels

she is entitled to a promotion. All of her other coworkers have received such a promotion. She

feels discriminated against. She mentioned hitting a glass ceiling. However, her job position

requires a college degree in engineering. Twice before she started college $$ at the company$$s

expense $$ only to quit because she did not want to do the required work. Thus, she does not

meet the requirements of the job. The company has made a number of efforts to work with

her on this, but she refused all these efforts.

At this meeting, she went on to say that she is financially poor due to a recent divorce with her

husband. The courts have deemed she has to pay her ex$-$husband alimony, as he does not have

a job and does not want one. Hence, she expects the company to provide her with a raise and

a promotion so that she can continue to be able to support her twins and her current way of

life. The company did provide her a small raise when her twins were born; she expects another,

much larger, one now.

Further, she stated that she is tired of always having to measure up to the $$real$$ engineers on

her team. She defined $$real$$ engineers as those with college degrees. She said she used to

value this company $$ before it required a college degree. She went on to say that this issue

combined with the twins$$ needs and the divorce have impacted her work ethic. She blames the

company for requiring a college degree for all of these misfortunes.

You as her manager have various options given to you by senior management. You can do any

of the following, but you must explain your chosen option and explain each of the other options

as they apply to this case:

Fire Her

Transfer her to another team

Do nothing

Advise her to finish college

Bypass the company policy and promote her and provide her a raise

Any other reasonable and legal solution not listed