I wonder if I'll get an A+++ for my first school assignment!

Also, I hope my co-worker never finds this blog.

Here's the task:  Think of a recent occasion when you needed to have a serious and/or potentially contentious conversation with someone important to you (e.g., your parents, supervisor, romantic partner or roommate). Describe that communication interaction in terms of the seven components of the communication process (i.e., message creation, meaning creation, context, participants, etc.). If you were going to study this communication occasion, what paradigm would you use to approach it (scientific, interpretive, etc.)?  Why?

And here's my assignment entry...um.  I hope I haven't gone too far (again)....

Because I live a fairly peaceful life and I try to avoid contentious discussions, I will relay a conversation that occurred between a co-worker and my own boss [participants].  My (female) boss decide that she was uncomfortable with my co-worker’s office attire being entirely too suggestive. She e-mailed my co-worker and requested that they meet face to face [channel] before the end of the work day, as close to 5pm as possible. My co-worker agreed to meet in my boss’ office at 4:45pm that day [setting].

My boss relayed that she found my co-worker’s attire degrading and insulting, and she suggested that perhaps my co-worker could wear longer skirts and wear blouses that were less revealing of her ample cleavage [message creation]. My boss offered the explanation that, working in a conservative, service industry environment, my co-worker should make a different impression on our clients and visitors [meaning creation and context].

My co-worker was taken aback because our office does not have a written dress code.  Nor has anyone ever suggested that any staff members were in violation of an unwritten wardrobe rule. Because my boss’ glass-walled office is partially exposed to the hallway and I happen to sit immediately outside my boss’ office [noise], my coworker felt exposed and she provided very little return communication [feedback].  She listened, thanked my boss for her advice and went back to her desk.

By the way, two days later, my office received a new dress code policy.

I would study this exchange under the social science approach. I think I would like to know more about my boss’ real concern about my co-worker’s mode of dress and what drove her to open a dialog that lead to a policy change. I would also be interested to understand the reason my co-worker feels compelled to wear her pheromones to work. 

Okay.  If I get an F I'll know that I need to tone it down and start being all academic and shit.  FML, I'm probably not cut out for this kind of adult responsibility.


UPDATE:  Who's your daddy now bitches?  I got 100%. Yeah.  I'm bad.