It was a bright yet breezy day in autumn. Rose decided to go to work early at 7 a.m. She had a report to be submitted to her supervisor immediately. It was not uncommon to get an unexpected assignment from her supervisor. Being a very busy businessman, Dr. Mark appreciated prompt report submissions from his employees, including Rose.
As usual, after switching on her desktop at the office, Rose made herself a cup of sugarless coffee. She took several sips before continue writing the report. Ideas kept coming in and she thought she could finish it by afternoon. At ten minutes before nine, her colleague arrived. They exchanged greetings. "How are you doing, Meg?", asked Rose. "Great! How about you?", Meg replied. "Good! But I have this report to be submitted to Dr. Mark today", said Rose while making a funny face. "Well, in that case, I won't bother you. We will talk later when you are done with the report", said Meg. Both of them continued working in silence. It was not long when Meg's phone rang. "Hello, Meg's speaking. Who's on the line?" "Oh! Hi, Teressa! Yes.. yes... I will wait for you in the office".
Upon hearing the name, Rose knew that it was Teressa, the other colleague sitting in the next room. "Hmm... what does she want now? I have to do something if they keep on talking more than ten minutes. Their conversation will definitely distract my focus", Rose was thinking aloud. Meg is a friendly person. She likes to talk a lot and she has many things to tell to her close friends such as Teressa. Rose knew that the conversation between Meg and Teressa would be long. They usually did that. While Rose was thinking what could Teressa want from Meg, both Rose and Meg heard a slight knock on the door before it was opened.
"Hello, Meg! How's your weekend? Did you have good time with your boyfriend?", asked Teressa, cheerfully. "Hello, Teressa! I'm fine! How about you? How's your vacation with your family?", Meg replied and then she hugged Teressa. Hugging is a typical greeting between two close friends in this western country. "It was great! My family and I...." the conversation continued between the two friends. They were talking aloud. Rose tried not to listen to their conversation. She put her best to concentrate on the report. She did not realize that the hard concentration made her frowned.
"Hey, Rose! Are you OK?", asked Teressa, who realized that Rose was not as cheerful as usual. "Yeah! I'm sorry, I can't join you girls now. I need to finish up my report before afternoon", replied Rose. Despite her explanation, the conversation continued up to another thirty minutes. Rose was upset. She wanted to tell Meg and Teressa to leave the room but she knew that she would feel guilty if she did that. She did not want to be rude.
At 11.30 a.m., Rose suddenly received a notification on her desktop screen, instructing her to update her Firefox browser. She followed the instruction but later she found out that it was not from the IT centre. Her desktop was infected by a computer virus. She panicked. Rose called Mr. Larry, the IT technician who was responsible for IT-related matters at her department. Mr. Larry told her that he could not fix the problem online and he had to come to her office.
"Why did you follow the instructions from an unknown source?", asked Mr. Larry. "I thought it was from the IT Centre", said Rose.
"No! We do updates online. We don't ask employees to updates anything on their own. See! This is the problem that we try to avoid. Now I have to fix it" Mr. Larry grumpily replied to Rose's answer. He gave a long sigh. He did not smile.
Questions
1. Assess Rose's attitudes and behaviors towards Teressa and Mr. Larry. Specify any assumption that you make when assessing their attitudes and behaviors.
2. What are your suggestions to manage the situations? Explain with examples.
3. Identify Rose's stressors. How would you advise her to manage her stress?
4. What possible consequences are likely to occur following Rose's experience in the above scenario?