Ted's Tirade

Ryan Worth was one of six white regional managers of a national motel chain in the US Northeast. Every so often, he would go out for drinks with his colleagues after finishing a meeting at the district office. On one such night, before leaving for the bar, they had also invited their boss, Andrew Johnson, to join them. Johnsona young, African American district manager who had been placed by corporate rather than coming up through the ranks like most managers in the companyhad politely declined, saying he had a lot of work to finish. Worth and the five other regional managers had thus gone to the bar without him.

After several drinks, Johnson somehow came up in the conversation. Although he had significantly less tenure than any of the regional managers he supervised (in fact, they'd all been there at least twice as long), Johnson had quickly won Worth's and the others' respect and support with his professionalism, expertise, and dedication. At least this is what Worth felt and what he had assumed was true for all his peersuntil that night when Ted Simmons, another regional manager, went off on a rant about Johnson. Included in Simmons's "beer truth" tirade about Johnson included several racial slurs.

Worth and the other four managers were shocked by the outburst and had said nothing direct in return, but instead had tried to change the topic as quickly as possible back to other subjects such as the NFL game being shown on the TVs in the bar.

Soon after, Worth made an excuse about needing to get home and left the bar. He felt sick to his stomach about what had happened. While he'd known that Simmons thought he should have gotten the district manager job when it was given to Johnson, he had not known that Simmons harbored the kinds of beliefs he had let out at the bar.

1. Select the optimum solution