Tyrese joined Tank Well Metal Fabricators as a human resources manager after earning his graduate degree in Human Resources from a university in New York. An American-born Latino of African descent, Diaz is bilingual and speaks without an accented English or Spanish.

Early on, Tyreses Latino coworkers spoke Spanish to him but ceased doing so when Tyrese did not seem to understand or attempt to reply in Spanish. Tyrese had learned to hide his bilingualism early in his work life to avoid having to do uncompensated translations that kept him from doing the work he was hired to do. In his HR first role out of college, Tyrese was required to translate all of the hiring documents into Spanish and to conduct all training sessions in Spanish and English. When he asked for more compensation for these tasks, he was told that these were within his job requirements, even though the other, monolingual HR employee employed at the same company did not have to conduct double training sessions and was not able to help with translating documents. After those experiences, Tyrese made the decision to hide his Spanish fluency when he was hired at a new company. Passing for monolingual has come with a cost for Tyrese, and now he must make a decision that will compromise his cover after six months at Tank Well

Tyrese recently overheard two Spanish-speaking employees describe a series of offensive remarks that a supervisor made to the receptionist, who also speaks Spanish. Presumably, because they assumed Tytrese didnt speak Spanish, the two employees were talking candidly about the incident while having lunch together in the breakroom. The supervisor in question had apparently told the receptionist, a newly hired recent graduate, that she could progress more quickly in the company if she dressed a bit more feminine, and maybe wore a bit of makeup.

The receptionist had confided in the other employees that she was considering filing a complaint with HR, but the employees had discouraged her from doing so and encouraged her to just take the advice of the supervisor to advance and, most importantly, to avoid any negative repercussions from filing a complaint, which they had seen happen in other cases. As an HR manager, Tyrese knows that the supervisor has crossed a line and should be reprimanded and corrected before the situation deteriorates further. However, as some- one who clearly was not expected to understand the conversation between the two employees, he is unsure of his next steps.

Questions

1. What should Tyrese do about what he overheard? What are the potential ramifications if he does nothing? (3 marks)

2. If Tyrese were not the HR manager but had still overheard the conversation, what should he do? In what ways would his obligation be similar and different? (5 marks).