During his tenure with Xerxes. Oliver has prided himself on his loyalty to the company. Although not exactly shy, he has never been comfortable in the limelight, preferring to perform his tasks competently but without the flare for the dramatic that seems to have characterized many of his peers. As a result, he has labored in the shadows for most of his professional career, watching as many less talented coworkers have risen through the ranks while he stayed in a mid-level management position far past the customary 8-10-year period that most employees take to move into upper management.
Fortunately, now, in the twilight of his career, Oliver has been promoted to the position of Manager of the Traffic Department. His job is to ensure that orders routed from Sales &Marketing are loaded onto the appropriate trucks in the warehouse for distribution. If more orders arrive than trucks, he must contact common carriers to transport the finished product to distribution warehouses throughout the country, When trucks break down or employees fail to show up for work, Oliver must find suitable replacements. The company's motto is"Always Right, Always on Time"; consequently, he is under a great deal of pressure to ensure that all orders leave the warehouse as soon as possible, or in any case within 24 hours of the arrival of the order.
Oliver is somewhat nervous about his new position because he is
stepping into mighty big shoes. His predecessor, Richard Goodson, was
a star on the rise. Only 34 years old, Goodson had earned degrees in
business from Princeton and the Wharton School of Finance and joined Xerxes after working in a variety of managerial positions in the communications technology industry. Everyone believed that Goodson would be the CEO of Xerxes or another firm before he turned 50. He had been overseeing Traffic for slightly over two years when he was killed in a senseless traffic accident on his way home from work a month earlier.
Goodson's management style had been what some workers called
"loosey-goosey."As one of the new breed of OD thinkers, he believed
that the Traffic Department functioned welI when he established small teams of employee within the department and left them alone to ship the orders. He was a"hands off manager, often "interfacing"with other department managers and serving on Xerxes's many management committees to improve the company's public relations efforts, especially with the all-important contract officers at the U. S. Department of Defense.