Conflict Resolution

            I started working at Millennium Park as a custodian during my high school summer breaks and went back every summer for four years. The job was fairly easy besides short spurts of hard work, the job paid two dollars over minimum wage and you got to enjoy the scenery. Everything ran smoothly besides certain days of the week were we would work with the park manager Sal. We had four park managers, working with three out of the four was doable, but Sal was short tempered, impatient with little compassion for his workers.

            The main problems that came about with working with Sal was that workers would get nervous whenever he was on shift, not only that but his work request were at times unreasonable or illogical. He would continuously yell at people to work faster or to do a better job, which was contradictory because if he wanted work done quickly that would mean giving up the quality of the work, and if he wanted quality that would mean giving up time. Also, some of his work requests were silly to say the least. For example, when I was still in high school I would work every weekend and in the winter I had to remove snow from a bridge that leads to the neighbor park. In retrospect, one would imagine the job to be fairly simple, pick up the snow with the shovel and toss it to the sides of the bridge, except that Sal had other thoughts. He wanted me to pick up the snow with the shovel, put it in a rolling garbage can, roll it to the bottom and then toss the snow on the sides of the bridge. Thinking it was silly I ignored his request at first and did it my way but he became furious once he found out and made me do it his way.

            My perspective of the situation was that his requests were silly and illogical, and most of the other workers thought the same things. The job could have been done faster and more efficiently had I been able to just toss the snow to the side of the bridge. On the other hand, Sal’s perspectives were probably different. Maybe he did know that his method was inefficient but perhaps he was trying to get a point across; maybe he wanted to impose his authority on me to show that it was his way, or the highway, a line his had said multiple times to some of the other employees. Another theory to why Sal might apply that managerial method is that he believed that his workers were uneducated and he knew best. But a problem that arose from Sal’s managerial style is that workers felt uncomfortable working with him and worked inefficient most of the time. And as said in B&D, the relationship between the workers and the managers determines how effective they are at work.

            People would not act to the problems that Sal brought to the working environment. The workers were too scared to express their opinions and if they did they would be punished by doing harder work of if the worker was seasonal they would get fired. People’s fears of Sal were so real that people would work their schedule around Sal’s shift, sometimes even giving up work days to avoid working with him. The conflict with Sal never got resolved, and in his anger tantrums escalated so high that he yelled at the wrong person one day. He began harassing a girl that worked at the bar located in the park because she had used park resources that she was not allowed to use; he said degrading things to her and got to her so bad that she went home in tears. What came into effect from that was that the girl’s boyfriend showed up to Sal’s house (no idea how he knew were he lived) and began beating on Sal so bad that he was sent to the hospital with internal bleeding.

            All those problems could have been solved had everyone acted differently. Sal could have avoided that eventual beating had he known how to show respect to his workers rather than being degrading. The workers could have acted differently as well by informing Sal’s higher ups about Sal’s actions since he would not listen to anyone below him. As said in B&D, communication is vital, Sal should communicate with his employees in respectful manner to get his point across, and employees should use their rights to report Sal’s improper behavior rather than just taking his harassment.

Gift exchange

The article was quite interesting and it is surprising how children so young were able to somehow analyze when to share and when to be greedy. Though I did not expect such an analysis by children on the events, it could be reasoned that one would be more willing to split the gains when work is divided up evenly, to keep the gains when one comes up lucky and to keep all the gains when on did his own work even if both challenges were the same. Events that occur day to day can be compared to the experiment with similar outcomes. For example, lets say Tim and Jim are to friends walking down the road and Tim sees a twenty dollar bill on the floor and picks it up, what are the odds that Time will go out of his way to split the twenty in two tens to share with Jim? Slim to none. On the other hand lets say Tim and Jim want to make some cash and decide to mow their neighbor’s lawn for fifty dollars. They do an even amount of work and decide to split the fifty to twenty-five/ twenty-five. The reason I’m making these scenarios up because I believe that the “share the spoils” button is activated by a sense of fairness or perhaps a sense of security. What I mean by a sense of security is that someone will be more willing to help you out if you help them out, especially if both are facing the same troubles.

             When I was younger, roughly from ten till like seventeen, I would go to my home country every summer. My grandparents would house and feed me every summer but I would feel bad asking for spending money, so two of my cousins and msyself came up with an idea to make some money. An uncle of ours owns a Torta restaurant in our village, and we offered him to sell the tortas around town in an ice box (tortas are similar to sandwiches in that both contain a bread but the ingredients that go within the torta are similar to those in tacos). Our uncle was happy to help, and he even said we could keep the whole profits of out sales as long as we helped clean the restaurant after closing time.

            On our first day working for our uncle, my two cousins and myself met up at the restaurant to discuss what route we would take.  We figured that we would all start in what would be the downtown of our village, split up, and then meet back at the restaurant. Once we came up with our game plan we filled up our iceboxs with tortas and went on our way.

            I made quick progress with my sales in the downtown of our town since it was the most densely populated area and I decided to continue with my sales at other locations that would have a large population of people. I sold at parks, went to the waiting rooms of the clinics and to local businesses. By the end of the usual dinner time (5 o’clock), I had sold all of my tortas. I headed back to the restaurant to meet with my cousins but I only found one. We decided to wait for our other cousin but it took him about an extra hour to finally meet up with us and he still had some of the tortas claiming he was unable to sell them.

            What had happened was that one of my cousins and myself had a similar strategy of selling at densely populated areas, while my other cousin decided to take a more isolated route simply because he knew it better. At the end of the day, the cousin that took the densely populated route and myself had made more money than the other cousin. Though we took different routes, the both of us who had made more money believed that we had put in the same amount of work, especially since our other cousin walked around for and extra hour, so we concluded that it would be fair to divide up our profits evenly, giving my “poorer” cousin a gift.

            Though our conclusion seemed noble, I thought ahead and considered my income risk for the future. For all I knew, both my cousins could make more profit than me next time around, so it would behoove me to share some of my gains from today to achieve some security in the future.

            I think my experience with team production and gift exchange correlates with the piece. For example, the three of us thought we put in about the same amount of work, since cleaning up the restaurant was also part of the deal, so we thought it would be fair to divide up the profits evenly just like the children who had to work together to get marbles divided up their profits. To be honest, the outcome would have probably been different if we felt we had done more work than our “poorer” cousin. For example, if we had found out that he decided to take a break, explaining his extra hour or work, we would have decided to keep our own profits. The same can be said if we got lucky and a customer decided to tip us or if we had found some money on the floor, I highly doubt that would have been shared.

            

Managing future income risk

Though I was undecided of my career path during my first two and a half years here at the University of Illinois, I did take proactive steps towards the future by being active with the school and community. My intentions as a freshman were to major in Math due to the high demand for STEM graduates in the job industry and due to my enjoyment with working with numbers. Since math is such a broad subject, I believed finding a job with a major in mathematics would be relative easy and to further emphasize my pre-degree I began to join organizations that focused on numbers. I first joined the “Matrix” club, a club focused around mathematics that introduced students to higher-level math classes, possible career options and offered networking events in order to further student’s knowledge of the subject. Joining “Matrix” did indeed prove to be very helpful; I learned of the existence of various jobs were mathematics is applicable, which would have made my job search easier had I stuck with a mathematics major. Unfortunately, once I began to take higher-level math classes I realized that I did not enjoy pure math as much as I though I did and I dropped out of the major and as a result I dropped out of “Matrix”.

            Once completely undeclared, I was unsure on what steps to take to assure a better future for myself since I had no idea what I was doing, but I quickly realized that there are many organizations that apply to any major/career path. For example, I joined Alpha Phi Omega during my sophomore year, a service fraternity that focuses around mutual assistance, friendship, and developing leadership. APO, as it is often called, allowed me to develop my communications skills, work ethic, and time management skills all which area applicable to the work force after graduation. APO also served a motivator mainly due to the fact that so many great and well-rounded individuals were a part of it; individuals whom I credit for opening my eyes on how much one can accomplish with the right mindset. Though I do consider APO fun, I do think that APO was a move towards to later rather than the now based on the amount of time commitment it required; it required a minimum of twenty five hours of community service, five hours worth of leader ship classes, seven hours of required brotherhood events and so on, time I could have spent on leisure, but the lessons I learned were priceless. I also consider APO a step towards reducing income risk because the skills I developed are essential in finding and keeping a job. Jobs demand their employees to be organized, hard working and dedicated. Keeping a job is dependent on those factors, and being able to keep a job is the best way to reduce income risk.

            Halfway through Junior year I realized how applicable math was to other majors, since I disliked the theory behind math, I decided to give other such majors a try which eventually led me to econ and statistics; Both subjects, like math, are quite broad and applicable to many fields, and in particular to actuarial science, my desired career path. Actuarial science applies high-level math and it is a career with essentially zero unemployment, making it a perfect fit to my skills and to my future. In order to pursue a career in the actuarial world, one needs to complete a set of difficult preliminary exams. Workbooks to practice for those exams usually range from 150-200 dollars, the exam prices are usually about 225 to take, and it is a common trend that one must study approximately 300 hours for each exam, meaning that one must invest both money and time to pursue such a career path. It is sometimes hard to pursue such a career, I could be using the money for the work books to go out and socialize and the time needed to study to hang out or pursue an easier career, but even though it is demanding, such career path is worthwhile; actuaries get paid a high salary, they have good job security, and it is a calm job, all factors that reduce income risk for my future.

            One of my cousins attended college, graduated, got a job, got laid off and then went back and received his MBA. My cousin attended Northwestern University and majored as an electrical engineer and received a job upon graduation. He’s job paid fairly well and he seemed to enjoy it, but once the U.S economy took a slight decline he was laid off. Not knowing what to do, he took the GMAT and applied to Northwestern’s Kellog school of management to which he received admission. To make the story short, my cousin was successful during his graduate career and got a job with American Airline’s marketing department. He’s salary is amazing and he loves his job, and to top things off he has his office located within the Willis Tower. In my opinion he did everything right, he studied hard during he’s undergrad and got a job even though he was unluckily laid of due to external factors, yet he handled the situation amazingly well by furthering he’s education in order to reduce his own income risk for the future. What I take from his experience is that hard work doesn’t always pay of right away, for example, though he worked hard during his undergrad career he ended up getting laid off after a couple of years of working. On the other hand, I did learn that perseverance pays of; he went back to school and excelled more than he ever thought possible.

Return to transfer pricing

If used properly, Illinibucks would be convenient for students attending this university. For example, if these Illinibucks were pre-specified and added to a students i-card, certain inconveniences such as having to withdraw or add money to one’s account would be avoided. If administered as such, Illinibucks would also make it easier for students to keep track of their budgets, especially if these Illinibucks were refreshed, lets say, every week. Having a specified budget of Illinibucks for each week would prevent students from going over the limit while allowing left over Illinibucks to accumulate for future purposes.

            The university and parents would also be more at peace if there existed a limit to what Illinibucks could acquire. For example, Illinibucks could be made to only purchase school related materials or common necessities, meaning parents won’t have the worry that their kids are buying alcohol or other narcotics with their hard earned money.

            Now, to be more specific, items such as school materials, food, and other common necessities would be good items that could be purchased by Illinibucks, which would make it similar to the café credit system implemented by university housing. Unlike the café credit system, Illinibucks could be distributed to all university students, not just those who live in university housing, but for that to happen, more units that accept Illinibucks would have to become available across campus.  With such system, Illinibucks would make it convenient for students to acquire certain goods, such as a meal, without having to travel too much out of their way. For example, lets say a student hasn’t had a thing to eat all day but the restaurants at the union accept Illinibucks, instead of going out of his way to get food at green street, this student could simply buy a meal with his Illinibucks at the union. Though the variety and quality might not be as good, it is convenient.

            Illinibucks could also be used to “cut the line” as mentioned. For example, some students get priority in registering for classes over others, Illinibucks could be used to give those students who don’t have priority the ability to register at a sooner date. Some classes are also locked for certain majors till a given date; Illinibucks could be used to give students access to this otherwise restricted classes. Though the idea of using Illinibucks to “cut line” seems convenient to the person using them, it might not be convenient for the system overall. For example, many of the restrictions on certain classes are there so that students within that major, or incoming freshman can pick them up. Without those restrictions, certain students might pick up classes just as Gen Eds while other students could taken them to go towards their major. Also, in the name of equity, it wouldn’t be fair for students who get priority for classes based their academics to get “cut” by another student who used these Illinibucks to cut line.

            Personally, I would spend my Illini bucks on food. You need food everyday and it would be a great to have access to healthy food like the ones offered by university housing rather than eating pizza every other day. Having access to food via Illinibucks would also be a huge time saver since I would avoid cooking or having to travel. I would also spend my Illinibucks on common necessities such as toilet paper and such when needed, since it would save time from having to travel to Wal-Mart or Walgreens.

            If the prices were administered to high, then the demand for goods acquirable by Illinibucks would go down. Students would then look for substitutes for these goods and the overall profitability of the system would go down. An example such as this exists on this university. 57 north for example, is a small convenience store located within one of the units of university housing that accepts café credits but it overcharges heavily for these products. Energy drinks tend to be about one dollar (one credit equals one dollar) more expensive then at Walgreens, and mediocre burgers go to about 5 credits apiece, something you can get for a dollar at McDonalds. If 57 north were to set their prices to the market prices their profitability would most likely go up.

            On the other hand, another scenario that could happen but is less likely is that the prices are set to low. In this case, the supplier of this goods would supply less of such goods, the demand would be to high and not every consumer would get what he desires despite having enough Illinibucks. In either case, profitability is lost if prices are set too high or too low.