Case Study: The Manager Identity

The Manager Identity As humans, we learn to write and read the way our teachers tell us, but we also learn how to adapt in other settings. We are taught about language, “’Language’ is a misleading term; it too often suggests ‘grammar’.” (Gee, Wardle & Downs, 483), what Gee is saying is that we can speak with perfect grammar but still have spoken wrong, “If I enter my neighborhood bar and say to my tattooed drinking buddy, as I sit down, ‘May I have a match please?’ my grammar is perfect, but what I have said is wrong nonetheless.” (Gee, Wardle & Downs, 483). Gee talks about an identity kit, or a discourse. Everyone has an individual personality that has been developing our whole life and will never stop growing, it affects how we write and …show more content…
The way an assistant manager talks to their superiors, their same level employees, and their lower level employees, and customers are very different. The newest assistant manager had many different discourses to learn, and she is still learning. My observations suggest that the most difficult discourse for my new assistant manager to learn was, how to talk to the same level employee. Talking to customers seemed easy and talking to her higher and lower up employees seemed like a piece of cake. Watching her interactions with the other assistant manager is pretty messy. She seems like she tries to be the top dog who runs everything, even though the other assistant manager is the …show more content…
They have to learn a new discourse every time somebody new comes into the store. The first customer can be super casual and super fun, but then all of a sudden, the second customer is very professional and very straight to the point. They must learn new discourses every time someone new walks in and they must learn it fast. The overall customer discourse is “the customer is always right”, which means every customer has the same base in all the discourses. The community for assistant managers is a rough one. They must learn to smile and fake a conversation with a rude customer who is clearly in the wrong. My assistant managers mushfake a lot on the job. They have to fake a smile to get into some customer’s discourse. Mushfaking plays a big role in the assistant manager community. Faking being nice is the hardest thing for them to do. I watch them mushfake at least ten times a day, when a customer is in the wrong and being rude to my managers, my managers sit there with a fake smile and help them as quickly as