Company policy: An employee of our company must be impartial, particul

Question

Company policy : An employee of our company must be impartial, particularly when dealing with family matters. This obligation extends to all aspects of the job, including hiring and firing practices and the quality of service the employee provides customers.

Which one of the following employee behaviors most clearly violates the company policy cited above?

(A) Refusing to hire any of one’s five siblings, even though they are each more qualified than any other applicant

(B) Receiving over 100 complaints about the service one’s office provides and sending a complimentary product to all those who complain, including one’s mother

(C) Never firing a family member, even though three of one’s siblings work under one’s supervision and authority

(D) Repeatedly refusing to advance an employee, claiming that he has sometimes skipped work and that his work has been sloppy, even though no such instances have occurred for over two years

(E) Promoting a family member over another employee in the company

Day 16 Question of the Verbal Contest:  Race Against the GMAT Club Timer 
Please make sure to post a brief reply without revealing your solution to enter the contest!

KS15 · Accepted Answer

Hi,

E is not right for the simple reason that promoting the family member could be either justified or unjustified. The family member could either deserve the promotion or not deserve the promotion. So there is an area of ambiguity. Whereas in A, the reasons are clearly given. Hence A.

Kudos the post if you like.

pate13 · Answer

It is A. Not hiring someone only because they are a family member is not an impartial action. The others all either treat everyone in the same regard, or fail to provide enough evidence to determine if the action is impartial.

The bigger takeaway from this question is understanding how the testmakers try to lead you into a wrong answer. When you see a problem like this, your bias and preconceived notions come into play. This problem in particular makes you think of nepotism, which you associate with treating family members in a favorable manner. When you see answer choice A, your mind wants to reject it because your mind doesn't want to see family members hired. However, upon further inspection, A is the only choice that treats a certain group of people unfairly.

Naina1 · Answer

I marked E

Can anyone explain why A is right?

AdityaHongunti · Answer

option B- 
including one's mother ! now does that include the mother of the person who complained? ( if so, then this is a violation)
if not then writing " one's mother" is redundant and in a way discriminatory .
what do you mean by one's mother?? so the rest don't have mothers?? or are others male?

tarunanandani · Answer

(B) Receiving over 100 complaints about the service  one’s office  provides and sending a complimentary product to all those who complain, including  one’s mother

I think what option B says is that the people who have complained includes the  mother of the office owner  and that the owner has sent the complimentary product to all including his own mother thereby has been impartial.

Hope this helps!

AdityaHongunti · Answer

How can you under that the pronoun "one" refers to the same person...as I read it the subgroup involves a person's mother too...

Posted from my mobile device

tarunanandani · Answer

As per my understanding there is no other singular proper noun in the sentence apart from office owner that singular pronoun 'one' can refer back, so I think the pronoun one refers back to the owner and not to plural noun 'all those who complain...'

shubham2312 · Answer

great question to say the least

E-this option is incomplete because we dont know whether the family member which has been mentioned here is better or worse than the other employee.
D-key word in this option is over 2 years it might be the case that before that there will be issues with the employee 
C-not even relevant 
B-clearly he is being impartial, he/she would have been unfair towards his/her if he/she would have avoided sending gifts to his/her mother.
A-the only option left.

shaarang · Answer

I chose 'A' correctly, however, I eliminated 'D' because the stem states "hiring, firing and customer service" not  promoting . Is this the correct line of reasoning or are there other reasons to eliminate 'D'?

Manvi_nagpal · Answer

A. Correct, as the argument says the employee must be impartial, especially when dealing with family doesn't imply that employee deliberately has to reject his family members while hiring. Not hiring a family member who deserves the job is partial. (Partial) 
B. Incorrect, If the employee would have sent the gift only to his mother cuz of the inconvenience, then we can consider this partial. (Impartial)
C. Incorrect, there must be a reason to fire someone; just becuz the person is a family member doesn't give the employee the athourity to fire that person for no reason (Impartial)
D. Incorrect, Record of last two years doesn't tell the whole story of the employee, so it doesn't tell whether the employee was partial.
E. Incorrect, This again doesn't tell whether this was done for a reason. Can't say again whether the employee is partial.

sambitspm · Answer

Any option that suggests that employee is not rewarding the other even when s/he is qualified enough, will be our answer.

(A) Refusing to hire any of one’s five siblings, even though they are each more qualified than any other applicant 
 5 siblings were more qualified than any other applicant. Still, they were not hired. This is a clear indication of a violation of impartial policy.  
 
(B) Receiving over 100 complaints about the service one’s office provides and sending a complimentary product to all those who complain, including one’s mother 
 If the employee had not sent a complimentary product just because the customer was mother of a colleague, then it would have been partial.

(C) Never firing a family member, even though three of one’s siblings work under one’s supervision and authority 
 They all might have been working great. Then there is no need to fire. So, no violation.

(D) Repeatedly refusing to advance an employee, claiming that he has sometimes skipped work and that his work has been sloppy, even though no such instances have occurred for over two years 
 There could be cases that before 2 years, the employee was performing very poorly and the 2 years was kind of grace period. Yeah, it is somewhat less clear, but we already have a solid option A, so we eliminate this.

(E) Promoting a family member over another employee in the company 
 That employee could have done a good job and hence deserved the promotion.

Answer A

mimishyu · Answer

to put the argument in brief:
company employee must be impartial toward jobs in firing or promoting or customer services…
--> find which one partial, or say, violate the given policy ...
(A) refuse to hire someone more qualified for the job, since its his own siblings, just this sounds having bias toward one group of people… this choice perfectly involves "comparing the competency" of two groups of people, and it could also be a partial example in that the more competent group is his own relatives but you don't hire them since they have blood relationship with you
(B) if he is willing to listen to complaints from all people except his mother, then this will be partial, and also vice versa, thus this must be an impartial one
(C)trap choice, ”never firing a family member” sounds a bit of nepotism as well as partial, however compare (C) to (A), we don’t know, in reality, whether the family member is worth firing or not or how its competency is….
(D)just that its no family matter or firing or hiring involved in this statement, or break down in another way--as we know from statement in (D) that "over these two years" there indeed has bias occur, however beside these two years maybe bias occur-then (D) in this situation would be correct- or maybe no bias no violation to the policy occur, so its just too ambiguous to determine whether (D) violate the given policy or not
(E)this choice same as (C), though at first sight seems partial in that it “promote a family member…”, however if compare to (A) we don’t know whether the family member is worth promotion or not

saipk · Answer

Just like how we assume in D that maybe the min requirement to advance is 2 years and eliminated it, why can't we assume in A that the positions were closed or cancelled and the company no more requires any new hiring?
I eliminated A for this reason.

Can someone please explain if there's anything wrong in my assumption?

Thanks in advance!

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