Poem

Roses are red, violets are blue
Management class was actually fun, who'd ever knew
From dropping eggs, and makings up products with Jell-O
To drawing triangles and building weird shapes with lego
Learning about many interesting things such as leadership, ethics, and the management proccess
Management 3120 was nothing but a success!

MGT Blogging

I think that having to maintain to a blog through out the semester for the class was actually a pretty good idea. It allowed everyone in class to give their opinions on certain topics and modules that we went through in class. I for one found it very interesting to go through some of the other student blogs and see what their views were on the things we did in class. Also seeing how we have a pretty big class, it would be impossible if everybody tried to give their opinions on what we were going over in class as we would run out of time pretty quickly, and not be able to get to much, so having the blog is a good alternative to that. One thing I would suggest is to make it a requirement to have everyone put up a picture of themselves in their blog, that way you could put a face to the name of the person you are responding to. Personally I have responded to a bunch of people in the class, but I have no idea who they are, or what they look like, and would not be able to pick them out of a line up if my life depended on it. I also liked the the fact that the blogs are worth 20% of our grades because I feel like its a fairly easy way of boosting up our grades. Even though I enjoyed blogging through out the semester with my thoughts on certain subjects, I'm not sure if I will continue to do it after the semester is over. The reason why I doubt I'll keep on blogging is mainly because I doubt that there will be anyone reading my blog when the semester ends, so I basically I would just feel like I'm talking to myself lol.

Extra Credit Assignment

In order to complete the extra credit assignment, I had to do something that I have not done in years and something I wasn’t planning on doing anytime in the near future—go to McDonald’s. When I did go to a McDonalds so that I can finally do the extra credit assignment, it was on a Tuesday afternoon around 1pm. I live in Staten Island so the McDonalds that is located not too far from house was not very busy at all at this time. There was practically no line to wait on as there was only one person ahead of me on line, and it took probably no more than thirty seconds before I was being helped. When the cashier asked how she may help me, I said I wanted a regular cheeseburger, but with only four pickles, at that point she looked up from the register with a puzzled look on her face and asked me to repeat what I just said. After I repeated my order, still with a puzzled look on her face she said “four pickles?” when I said yes, I noticed that she kinda rolled her eyes at me a little bit, and then she stepped away and called someone from behind the kitchen counter and told them to only put four pickles on the burger. Then when I said I also wanted small fries with no salt, she looked up at me and gave me a little smirk, and then told the person that was standing next to the french fries to make a batch with no salt. After I paid her for the food, I took a step to the side while waiting for them to complete my order. There wasn’t anyone else in line behind me, so she didn’t have to go back to helping some other customer, so while I was waiting for my order she asked me if the four pickles on the burger was an OCD thing. I didn’t want to lie, so I told her no, and then told how it was an assignment for school. When she asked for what class and I told her management, it turned out that she’s also currently taking a management class at College of Staten Island, so we briefly ended up talking about our classes and school until my order got complete. After I received my food, I opened up the burger to see if they put four pickles, and ate one of the fries to check if they got it right, and indeed they did. I used the timer on my phone to see how long this process would take, and from the moment I began placing my order till when they finally handed my food it took exactly three minutes and thirty eight seconds.
I think the staff did a very good job at accommodating this unusual order. I could tell that they were unconvinced by this order, however they still prepared exactly what I ordered. At first I felt like the cashier was a little confused at my order, however after I ended up talking to her for a little bit and told her how its just an assignment for class she actually thought it was a pretty cool and interesting idea. Seeing how this was a very unusual order, she did a good job at communicating with the other workers to make sure I got the food made exactly how I wanted it. However I think the fact that it was very slow at the time that I came in helped a lot because they weren’t busy and weren’t dealing with a bunch of different orders at the same time. I am sure that had I went to a McDonalds somewhere in Manhattan in the middle of lunch time rush they would have a much more difficult time communicating with each and getting my order done because they would be dealing with a lot more customers and the place would be a lot more hectic. If I was a McDonald’s consultant, the only thing I would recommend them to accommodate these types of unusual orders is make their register be more equipped to handle special orders. As of right they have options that allows to put it orders like onions/no onions; cheese/no cheese, etc. So maybe they can add an option that if some one wants more pickles, they can add the exact number of pickles using the number pad on the register.

What kind of manager am I?

After taking the Personal Profile System test, it showed that I'm a "S" type manager. According to the descriptions, some of the characteristics of an "S" type manager is someone who demonstrates patience, looks for minimal conflict, is willing to help others, shows loyalty, and identifies with a group. Reading the descriptions, I think that the test definitely got it right. Most of the of the characteristics do actually describe the type of person I am. Looking at the other three types of different managers, there isn't any that I would actually rather be. I like the fact that I'm an "S" type because I always felt that working with others, and not try to influence or dominate everyone else into believing in my opinions is the best way to go and will ultimately lead to a best result.

I definitely think its possible to become another type of manager if someone actually has the desire for it. I think it was a very good idea that we took the test so that some people in the class maybe got to see what type of manager they are, and if they are unhappy with their result they know what they should do to try and become another type of a manager.

The Power Of Vision

One of the most important things in life is to have a vision, and set up goals for what you want to accomplish in your lifetime. The more I grow up, the more I realize that if you dont set a certain vision of what you want to accomplish, the more likely you will look back and regret not doing certain things in your life.

Currently, one of the visions I have, which I'm sure is probably very similar to most of you reading this post is that I want to have a good job after finishing college. Personally I would like to become an accountant, and obtain a CPA license. The steps I'm taking towards accomplishing that vision is obviously going to school and taking courses to get my degree. Also in January I plan on actively beginning to search for internship that will allow me to get some hands on experience in the field of accounting.

Another vision and goal that I have set up for myself is that I want to travel around the U.S., and the world. This past summer I got to go to San Fransico, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Montreal and Israel. I had a blast on all those trips. While I was on the west coast I stayed at different hostels where I got to meet a ton of people from all over the world, and of the biggest differences I found about the U.S. and other countries is the outlook on traveling. Every one I met told me how its pretty much a cultural norm for people to travel from where they're from after completing school and before they start a job and begin to settle down. Meanwhile in the U.S. if you tell someone that you plan on traveling after you complete school, people will look at you like you're crazy. Either way, some of the steps I have taken towards this goal is I've trying to save more money. Also I signed up for a program that will allow me to go Israel and Amsterdam next summer for free.

A third vision that I have for myself is that I want to attend a Fifa World Cup final game. I've always been a huge soccer fan, and have played soccer all my life. Ever since I can remember it was always a dream of mine to be attend a world cup game, and more importantly a world cup final. Although I doubt I'll have the monetary funds to accomplish this at the 2010 world cup in South Africa, hopefully I'd be able to to fulfill this vision of mine at the 2014 world cup in Brazil.

Decision Making

When the professor told us that he was going to allow the class to decide what he should do with the midterm grade I was very surprised because I never had a class where we were the given that option. When he said that the only way he'd comply with our decision is if we get 100% agreement within the class I knew it was going to be hard seeing how there are so many students in the class and everyone has their own agenda.

I didn't do too bad on the test so my what I wanted most to happen is to get the test curved, that way I would end up with a pretty good grade. I was very glad that getting their tests curved was pretty much on every else's agenda as well so within the first few minutes everyone agreed that that's something we all definitely wanted to happen. At that point I got what I wanted so I decided to just sit back and be accommodating to everyone else's demands. I didn't interject much after that because there were already more than enough people yelling over each other and trying to get their points and their demands across; and seeing how what I wanted to happen most (which was to curve the test) was already in the bag I figured what ever else would happen would be a bonus so I was willing to accomodate what my other classmates wanted without interjecting and causing more conflict and debating.

Protecting the Egg

When we found out our task, everyone in the group started to share their ideas of how they thought would be the best way to keep the egg from breaking. After jotting down the different ideas we all finally agreed on one that we felt would be the most effective.

Although we didn't know about the planning process that was later discussed in our next class, I think looking at it now we naturally ended up following most of the steps. The first thing we did is to define our objective, which was to keep the egg from breaking. Second, we looked at our resources, and came to the decision that the best thing to do was to to cut the straws in half, that way we would have more protection all around the egg. Thirdly, after jotting down the ideas that we had we looked at all of them individually and everyone gave their input on the ideas that thought would/wouldn't work. The only step that we skipped of the planning process was step 4 because we didn't really plan out and assign specific jobs. When we got our resources, people naturally found their role in the project whether it was holding the straws in place, taping them together or cutting pieces of tape and handing it to person who was actually taping the straws together. Overall I felt like our team worked very well together.

And finally the evaluation of our plan came when we dropped the egg into the basket...and unfortunately our egg ended up getting slightly cracked