As the Store Manager for the Gemilang Hyper Market

8/2/2019 As the Store Manager for the Gemilang Hyper Market

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A Complaint toward the Lamb Meat

Dear Sir,

As the Store Manager for the Gemilang Hypermarket, it is my duty to report any

complaints to you sir as the Branch Manager. This matter has just happen yesterday and it

needs your immediate attention. Yesterday evening at 6.50pm, we received our first

complaint towards the lamb meat that is just in store. One particular customer, named Ahmad

Hashim, complained about his meat being smelly and had a bad taste. He bought 3kg of lamb

meat worth RM15 per kilogram at 5pm and straight away returned it at 6.30pm. We duly

refund him his money and promised him that this matter will be brought forward to our

Branch Manager. He accepted it and promised to come back again next time, due to our

excellent customer service which we had just provided him just now. We the workers are part

of the Gemilang Hypermarket and it is our duty to provide our customers the best service

they should had. And again at about 8.00pm and 9.00pm, we received another two complaints

about the lamb meat. But as for the lamb meat, we stopped selling them as soon as we

received the first complaint. Long Leng Seng, the 2nd

complainer, and Ravi A/L Muthu as the

3rd

complainer. Both of them had the same problem too, the lamb meat had a rotten and had

smelly taste into it. We gave them their refunds and our promise to them towards solving this

matter as soon as possible.

These are the few reasons on why I should file a complaint report letter. This is to

prevent this matter from becoming worse in the future. In this case, I have compiled a lists of

happenings that may led towards this shortcoming, this is to prevent this thing from

happening ever again. I as the Store Manager felt heavily responsible on this fiasco and I am

doing my best to solve it.

As for the proposals, I propose that Gemilang Hypermarket should remove all the

spoiled meat and do a thorough checking into it. Then we will know what happen to the lamb

meat and we can also figure out ways to rectify it. After we know what happened to meat,

then we can find the source of this meat rotten problem. Is it from us, the supplier, or both?

As for the checking, the conduct of it should be thorough and detail. This will help us on

finding ways to improve while serving our customers better than ever before. Thus after

doing our investigation, I and my fellow workers have sum up a few possible solutions.


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In this present situation, I have identified 4 possible problems on how the lamb meat

became rotten and smelly. This after consulting my workers and asked them about the

possibilities on how the meats became spoiled. Nizam, Jamil, Chee Keong, Jason and Imen

have all given me their insights and ways to prevent it getting worse than before. After

hearing them out and after a few discussions, there are tons of what may be the cause of this

serious mishap of lamb disaster and I have sum up the whole discussion process to be

forwarded to you sir as the Branch Manager.

This first possible scenario towards this nuisance is that the meat has been put up in

the freezer for far too long. This comes from my source that the meat has been inside the

freezer for weeks now. While checking up on the meat, I notice that the According to an

article from ehow.com, the meat should be pinkish (light or dark) without any gray or tan

colours. Gray and tan colours indicate bacteria on the meat. As from what I see in the meats,

the colours were dark red, a bit of reddish colour. These definitely spell some bad troubles

and bad rating for the store. What I suggest is we should improve the delivery times for the

meat. Since our meats only being delivered to us after one week of processing, maybe we

should improve it by a day or two. As for the cost, the supplier may demands more from us,

due to short timeframe that they had. Another suggestion is that we should place our orders

according to the demand that we received. This could save us the losses of having to thrownout the meats that we cannot sell. As for the meat, if the supplier decided to send out more

than we ordered, it is best that we just rejected it, thus saving us from having to deal with

meats that are going to go bad in a day or two if we did not keep it properly.

And according to mideastfood.about.com,

If lamb will not be used within a couple of days, it must be frozen. Make sure your freezer

keeps a steady temperature of 0 degrees or below.

Therefore it is important for us to keep or freezer in the 0 degrees which is suitable enough

for the meat to be stored. In our freezer, it is possible that the freezer might experience a bit

of a malfunction, hence turning the lamb meat into the smelly lamb meat that we know. Thus

a big investment towards the freezer might help sort this problem out.

The second possible scenario is that there are some mishandling cases that have not

been reported yet. I managed to ask my workers about it and they confessed on about a few

of them having mistakenly dropped the meat in the ground. This is some serious case here


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and I cannot tolerate with them on this anymore. Nizam admitted that in one or two occasions

that he had drop the lamb meat into the floor without noticing it for about half an hour. And

when he realizes it, he just lift it back up and pretend nothing goes wrong. In his defence, he

said that he is afraid that he will lose his job if anyone would ever find out about it. I

seriously reprimand him on his action for that.

As for this, I propose that we need to find better skilled workers for our meat

department, hiring a few school leavers would not help us out much. Therefore hiring a few

skilled workers can help us improve efficiency and qualities of our meat and service.

Although hiring them would prove costly, this is a chance for us to make things right, while

giving our customer the satisfaction that they should have.

These are the requirements that workers should have:

loading meat products into trucks packing boned and sliced meat into cartons packing fish and counting packs before freezing, and packing frozen fish blocks into

cartons

cleaning and sanitising equipment and work areas

If we cannot find new workers for this post, maybe we should train them and teach them

the ways on how to handle lamb meat in a more effective and productive way. With training,

the work rate of our workers will increase dramatically

And According to Ben Horowitz (2010), Ironically, the biggest inhibitor to putting a

training program in place is the perception that it will take too much time. Keep in mind, that

there is no investment that you can make that will do more to improve productivity in yourcompany.


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And according to Ben Horowitz (2010) again, these are the few reasons on why we

should train our workers

1.Productivity

If your training efforts result in a 1 percent improvement in you subordinates performance,

you company will gain the equivalent of two hundred hours of work as the result of the

expenditure of your twelve hours.

2.Performance Management

If you dont train your people, you establish no basis for performance management. As a

result, performance management in your company will be sloppy and inconsistent.

3. Product Quality

As success drives the need to hire new engineers at a rapid rate, companies neglect to train

the new engineers properly. As the engineers are assigned tasks, they figure out how to

complete them as best they can. Often this means replicating existing facilities in the

architecture, which lead to inconsistencies in the user experience, performance problems,

and a general mess. And you thought training was expensive.

4.Employee Retention

During a time of particularly high attrition at Netscape, I decided to read all of the exit

interviews for the entire company to better understand why people quit hi-tech companies.

After putting economics, aside, I found that there were two primary reasons why people quit:

1. They hated their manager generally the employees were appalled by the lack ofguidance, career development and feedback they were receiving.

2. They werent learning anything the company wasnt investing in the employees.Another possible scenario for this spoiled meat is that our storage facility is not up to

date to the current standard. According to P. Kendall (2011), in an refrigerator state (0-5

Celsius degree), lamb meat can only be kept for only 2 to 4 days, while in a freezer state

(which is in -17 Celsius). The lamb meat can be stored from 6 to 9 months.


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From what I observed, our freezers in the storage facility have issues in maintaining

the supposed temperature that we must keep. Old technologies have prevented the freezer

from keeping a consistent -17 Celsius. The temperature fluctuates from -17 to 0 and

sometimes to 10 degree Celsius. With temperatures like this, it is hard for us to know the

exact date when the lamb meat is going bad. This may be one of the reason on why our meat

have gone bad even though we have been doing our regular checking for quite some time

now.

Thus, we must invest heavily on a freezer that is highly capable in maintaining regular

temperature and can storage up to 300kg of lamb meat. This is important so that we can store

our meat in a large quantity while preserving its freshness in a control and regulated

temperature. Although this piece of equipment is expensive and may reach tens of thousands

of Ringgit Malaysia, but the return investment for it can reach more than tens of thousands of

ringgit. This is what I hope Gemilang Hypermarket can achieve.

Speaking about storage facilities, the cleanliness inside it must be taken serious as

well. From mishandling workers, to cleaners doing their part in perpetuate freshness of our

meat. Cleanliness are vital for the meat to be preserved in a much better way. Therefore,

cleaners and workers alike in our hypermarket should be train and be taught the better way of

doing their jobs. But the Gemilang Hypermarket must also provide them the necessary

equipment for them to do their part of the job. With proper equipment and training, our

workers can give their full commitment in doing their job. While it may cost a bit more than

our usual budget, it is one of the key reasons in preserving the meat from being infected by

dirty bacteria or germs that may speed up the rotten process.

According recipetips.com, the best way to store lamb meat are

During food preparation, it is very important to wash your hands often to help

prevent the transfer of harmful bacteria from one food item to the next. For example, when

handling raw meat, you should wash your hands thoroughly before chopping vegetables to

reduce the risk of transferring bacteria from the meat to the vegetables.

The knife that was used to cut raw lamb should not be used to chop vegetables unless the

knife has been washed thoroughly first.


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For the fourth possible scenario, I suspect that the quality of our meat is below par

then what we are supposed to receive. Me and my workers have been checking up on the

meats and have discovered that they may have lack the freshness of a lamb meat. I figure that

these meats must have been put away inside the suppliers freezer for quite some time now.

Although the rotten problem have only been showing up yesterday, but my workers have

long been suspicious with the meat. And their guess is true when yesterday one of the meats

goes rotten. I also been telling them that they should tell me anything if they suspicious on

something. When I start and asking around the customers here regarding the lamb meat, they

too agree that our meet had not been up to the standard.

According to the United States Food Safety and Inspection Service, Optimum surface

color of fresh meat (i.e., cherry-red for beef; dark cherry-red for lamb; grayish-pink for

pork; and pale pink for veal) is highly unstable and short-lived.

With that being said, our lamb meats are mostly dark cherry red and this is not what

our customers want. Lamb meats that are in pink or light red are the ones that we should be

on the lookout for. These have been going on for a few weeks now since we started our

dealing from our supplier.

With this, I am suggesting two options. One, we make a demand to our supplier for

them to give us a high quality meat. Or two, we change our current supplier to a new

supplier.

For the old supplier, we demand that they change their low substandard meat into a

high quality reliable lamb meat. As for the costs, if they decided to ask for more, I suggest

that we do not give them, because we already sign up our agreement which enables us to get

high quality meats at a right price. But by giving us low quality meat, they are not living up

to the standard and by right, we could sue them.

If the current supplier still did not want to balk up on our condition, we should change

our supplier into a new and reliable supplier. I suggest that we pick supplier that can give us a

better quality lamb meat than the current supplier that we had. We might as choose a supplier

that can give us consistently high quality of meat rather than supplier who balk up on their

promise. As for the cost, it might be costly if we were to import our lamb meat from a high


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8/9

As a conclusion, I hope that all of these strategies and recommendations can be

followed up and be made as soon as possible. Even though there are different kinds of

possible scenario on how this matter happens, we should analyse each one of them carefully

without making any hastily judgement. Hence the reason why this report is as comprehensive

as it can be.

The changes that will be made in the future should not be a sign for the other workers

that their job is in danger, and as a matter of fact, these changes can help them doing their job

more precisely and efficiently. They should not be afraid of changes that are going to be

made in the hypermarket, but more importantly, they should be happy and glad that their jobs

will be easier and more productively for them to continue their job.

Changes at a workplace are important for a team and it is my best interest that these

changes may help us in our future upbringing. These recommendations are some of the best

possible ways to help us improve our service to our customers.

Yours Truly,

Leonard Leonidas

Store Manager

Gemilang Hypermarket.


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Kathryn Hatter, (2011) How to Detect Spoiled Lamb Meat, Retrieved from

http://www.ehow.com/how_5796765_detect-spoiled-lamb-meat.html

Australian Government (2001)Meat, Poultry and Seafood Process Workers, Retrieved from

http://joboutlook.gov.au/pages/occupation.aspx?code=8313

Ben Horowitz (2010) Why It's Crucial To Train Your Employees, Retrieved from

http://articles.businessinsider.com/2010-0517/strategy/30098342_1_managers-training-

productivity/2#ixzz1cHEIS6br

Saad Fayed (2011) How to Select the Best Cut of Lamb , Retrieved from

http://mideastfood.about.com/od/tipsandtechniques/a/selectinglamb.htm

Elizabeth Angeli, Jodi Wagner, Elena Lawrick, Kristen Moore, Michael Anderson, Lars

Soderlun, Allen Brizee, Russel Keck (2011) Reference List: Electronic Sources (Web

Publications) Retrieved fromhttp://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/10/

Peggy Trowbridge Filippone (2011) How to store and select lamb Retrieved from

http://homecooking.about.com/od/foodstorage/a/lambstorage.htm

P. Kendall and N. Dimond (2007) Food Storage for Safety and Quality Retrieved from

http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/foodnut/09310.html
http://www.ehow.com/how_5796765_detect-spoiled-lamb-meat.htmlhttp://www.ehow.com/how_5796765_detect-spoiled-lamb-meat.htmlhttp://joboutlook.gov.au/pages/occupation.aspx?code=8313http://joboutlook.gov.au/pages/occupation.aspx?code=8313http://articles.businessinsider.com/2010-0517/strategy/30098342_1_managers-training-productivity/2#ixzz1cHEIS6brhttp://articles.businessinsider.com/2010-0517/strategy/30098342_1_managers-training-productivity/2#ixzz1cHEIS6brhttp://articles.businessinsider.com/2010-0517/strategy/30098342_1_managers-training-productivity/2#ixzz1cHEIS6brhttp://mideastfood.about.com/od/tipsandtechniques/a/selectinglamb.htmhttp://mideastfood.about.com/od/tipsandtechniques/a/selectinglamb.htmhttp://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/10/http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/10/http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/10/http://homecooking.about.com/od/foodstorage/a/lambstorage.htmhttp://homecooking.about.com/od/foodstorage/a/lambstorage.htmhttp://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/foodnut/09310.htmlhttp://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/foodnut/09310.htmlhttp://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/foodnut/09310.htmlhttp://homecooking.about.com/od/foodstorage/a/lambstorage.htmhttp://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/10/http://mideastfood.about.com/od/tipsandtechniques/a/selectinglamb.htmhttp://articles.businessinsider.com/2010-0517/strategy/30098342_1_managers-training-productivity/2#ixzz1cHEIS6brhttp://articles.businessinsider.com/2010-0517/strategy/30098342_1_managers-training-productivity/2#ixzz1cHEIS6brhttp://joboutlook.gov.au/pages/occupation.aspx?code=8313http://www.ehow.com/how_5796765_detect-spoiled-lamb-meat.html

As the Store Manager for the Gemilang Hyper Market

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