Informational Message

PROBLEM

You are the head of the catalog sales department of Branford’s, a large department store in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Most of your 17 full-time employees are high school graduates, many of them female. For beginning workers, you pay $2.50 over the minimum wage, plus fringe benefits. Send a message to your employees informing them that management has decided that no one can take vacation or personal days during the months of November and December. The reason, of course, is that the holiday season is your busiest sales period.

PROCESS

The purpose of this message is to inform all of my employees that management has decided that no one can take a vacation or personal day off during the months of November and December. I used an indirect approach because the reaction of my employees will more than likely be negative. The reasoning that I gave to my employees is that the holiday season is our busiest sales period; we need everyone to be working to combat with the influx of sales. To use positive language I avoided using expressions that carry negative connotations. As for stressing the “you” message, I ended with a reader benefit, or an incentive, which let the readers know that they will benefit from agreeing with this news when the holiday season has ended. I formatted this message as a memo because it is a document that I commonly used for internal communications between coworkers and members of a department.

PRODUCT

The document follows on the next page.

CERTIFICATION

I certify that this document was composed and formatted by this student.

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Student Date
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Instructor Date

Memorandum

TO: