Easter weekend 2016: Our residents have more or less pre-planned and as it goes, some go to their relatives or friends, others stay in the WG.

Mona Geiger (personal descriptions can be found here) spontaneously decides to launch a party on Easter Saturday and invites friends. Roger Lederer, Raphael Studer and Nadja Spring are also part of the team. The otheren are absent or do not participate in the party. Then, on Easter Sunday, the bad news: After a humid and cheerful meal, several residents and visitors suffer from acute stomach pains. Two have to go to the hospital: Diagnosis food poisoning! You are unable to work for at least 2 weeks. On Wednesday after Easter, the WG residents meet and discuss the situation. Here’s what turns out: Mona and Nadja have prepared a potato salad for the party and mixed a fresh mayonnaise from “fresh” eggs. The latter apparently contained too much salmonella, which led to the poisoning symptoms.

Maria is confronted with accusations from the residents that she did not pay enough attention to the order in the refrigerator and is to blame for the misery. The residents hurl all sorts of accusations at each other until Maria stands up and asks the following questions:

• Did anyone know how old the eggs were?
• Who put the eggs in the refrigerator?
• Why was the mayonnaise homemade, even though it had tube mayo in the fridge?
• Where were the lettuce and mayonnaise stored?
• Who was responsible for the preparation and who controlled the ingredients?
• Why didn’t anyone notice that the eggs were obviously overdue?
• When were the first symptoms of the disease detected? What was the response to this?
• Why could salmonella develop so quickly even though the salad was in the refrigerator.

In the course of the clarifications, the following facts come to light:

• The refrigerator was much too warm, apparently the cooling unit has been at least battered for some time.
• The origin of the eggs remains a mystery, some apparently also had no date stamp.
• The method of preparing mayonnaise is particularly susceptible to salmonella.
• No one considers the refrigerator to be their territory, i.e. no one wants to take responsibility for its contents.
• There are many other foodstuffs included, for which it is hardly possible to draw conclusions about freshness.

Roger Lederer is already threatening a lawsuit by his lawyer father, the sick people demand compensation (loss of earnings) from the WG. Sepp Serios wants to close the refrigerator, each resident should acquire his own cabinet. Rita Ernst wants to ban food in the WG and set up a working group for clarification and Raphael Studer will do without food from the refrigerator in the future.

What should Mary do? Discuss with us!

• What comparable situation can you observe in your company when it comes to data storage?
• What role behaviors do they notice and what similarities with our WG do you notice?
• Which roles are key stakeholders in both the WG and the company and are of particular importance?
• Who in the WG (in the company) is responsible for the damage or can be held liable?
• Which measures are effective in the short, medium and long term?