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The small group gathered in a conference room at a Red Roof Innnear Pittsburgh had a common bond and an unusual goal. They allworked for restaurants in the Red Lobster chain. Now they had tofigure out whether a Red Lobster waitress had been unjustly fired.The panel included a general manager, an assistant manager, aserver, a hostess and a bartender, all of whom had volunteered toreview circumstances of the firing and had been told simply to dowhat they felt was fair.

The waitress, Ruth Hatton, was fired in 1996 for stealing aguest-comment card from the Pleasant Hills, Pa., Red Lobster whereshe worked. Ms. Hatton was then a 19-year Red Lobster veteran; whenshe was fired, she says, \"it felt like a knife going through me.\"–– ADVERTISEMENT –– But Red Lobster allows employees who have beenfired or disciplined to appeal to panels of co- workers, who heartestimony and can overturn management decisions and award damages.Thus, instead of suing, Ms. Hatton called for peer review, whichtook place three weeks after the firing. Across the country, agrowing number of companies, including TRW Inc., RockwellInternational Corp. and Marriott International Inc., are adoptingsimilar ways of limiting worker lawsuits and easing workplacetensions. The most popular method is peer review, which lawyers sayis particularly effective because it channels the pain and furyemployees feel after being fired.

Darden Restaurants Inc., the Orlando, Fla., company that ownsthe Red Lobster and Olive Garden chains and has 110,000 workers,adopted peer review four years ago. The program has been\"tremendously successful\" in keeping valuable employees from unfairdismissal and cutting $1 million from annual legal expenses foremployee disputes, which now total $3.5 million, says generalcounsel Clifford Whitehill. Until recent changes, about 100disputes end up in peer review yearly, with only 10 resulting inlawsuits. Red Lobster managers and many employees also credit peerreview with reducing racial tensions. They say peer review has, insome cases, reversed decisions by managers who overreacted tocomplaints from minority customers and employees.

Ms. Hatton's case, like at least half of the dozen or sodisputes to go through peer review in the company's Pittsburghregion had a racial component. Ms. Hatton, who is white, was firedfor pocketing a black couple's comment card complaining their primerib was \"rare\" and their waitress \"uncooperative.\" Ms. Hatton saysshe intended to show the card to her boss, not to steal it. Ms.Hatton chose peer review over going to court because it was \"a lotcheaper,\" she says, adding: \"I also liked the idea of being judgedby people who know how things work in a little restaurant.\" DianeK. Canant, the Pleasant Hills restaurant's general manager,testified first. Ms. Canant, who supervised about 100 employees,said she fired Ms. Hatton after the irate customer complained toher and her supervisor. Through circumstances that remain unclear,the customer learned that Ms. Hatton had removed her comment cardfrom the box.

\"The customer felt violated because her card was taken from thebox, and she felt that her complaint about the food had beenignored,\" Ms. Canant recalls telling the peer-review panel.Brandishing a company rule book, the manager said Ms. Hatton hadviolated a policy forbidding the removal of company property. Ms.Hatton, who says she received dozens of calls of support, testifiednext. The waitress, 53 years old at the time, explained that thewoman had requested a well-done piece of prime rib and complainedthat the meat was fatty and undercooked. Ms. Hatton said shepolitely suggested that \"prime rib always has fat on it,\" and thewoman scowled. Ms. Hatton didn't explain her comment to the panel.She says now that she thought that, based on her experience withblack customers in the working-class area, the customer might haveconfused prime rib and spare rib. Ms. Hatton then had the meatcooked some more. When the customer remained displeased, Ms. Hattonoffered a free dessert. Apparently still unhappy, the woman dousedthe meat with steak sauce and then shoved away her plate. She orher companion then filled out a comment card, paid the bill andleft, Ms. Hatton said. Consumed by curiosity, Ms. Hatton asked thehostess for the key to the comment box. She said she read the card,then pocketed it, intending to show it to Ms. Canant, who hadfretted earlier that the prime rib was overcooked, not undercooked.Because of a problem that day heating the prime rib to the propertemperature, Ms. Hatton said, the restaurant was serving meat thathad been cooked the previous day and then reheated. Ms. Hatton saidfurther that she forgot about the card and inadvertently threw itout. (Red Lobster says it's against company policy to servereheated meat. The chain no longer serves prime rib.) Third andlast to testify was the hostess, Dawn Brown, then a 17-year-oldstudent employed at the Pleasant Hills Red Lobster for the summer.\"I didn't think it was a big deal to give her the key,\" she recallstelling the panel. \"A lot of people would come up to me to getit.\"

In deliberations, panelists balanced the facts that a customer'sfeelings had been hurt and that an unofficial policy forbiddingemployees from going into the comment box had been violated againsttheir belief that Ms. Hatton hadn't intended to steal companyproperty. \"We basically believed her. Ruth may not have reallywanted Diane to see the comment card, but she really didn't thinkshe had done anything wrong,\" says panelist Larry Simpson, thegeneral manager of the Greensburg, Pa., Red Lobster and a friend ofMs. Canant's. All of the panelists had peer-review training andwere being paid regular wages and travel expenses. Severalpanelists criticized Ms. Canant for not putting a rebuke in Ms.Hatton's personnel file and leaving it at that. Others suggestedthat her hands might have been tied by corporate headquarters. \"RedLobster is sensitive to race on a corporate level, and Floridacould have said, 'Whack her. You have someone who [upset] a guest,'\" Mr. Simpson says. \"I think the whole thing snowballed.\" Thepanelists' views initially split by rank, with the hourly workerssupporting Ms. Hatton. \"By the end we were all going in the samedirection,\" Mr. Simpson says. After an hour and a half, theyunanimously restored Ms. Hatton's job. The unofficial policyagainst reading the contents of a comment box, they reasoned,hadn't been enforced at the restaurant. Still, because policy hadbeen violated, the panel didn't grant the waitress the three weeksof lost wages she sought. Mr. Whitehill, Darden's general counsel,says the panel \"reached the right result.\" Given Ms. Hatton's yearsof experience, he says, \"she's somebody we want to keep.\" Ms.Canant says it \"didn't bother me a bit that she got her job back.\"When she returned to work, Ms. Hatton says Ms. Canant treated herprofessionally and even cut her some slack when she had a bad back.When the manager transferred to Texas last summer, Ms. Hattoncontributed to a going-away gift. \"The process worked,\" thewaitress says. \"The panel took my claim seriously.\"

part 1) According to the article, peer review panels... (Pleaseselect all that apply)

a.		have decreased the legal costs of firms that attempted to usethem
b.		are valued by Red Lobster management
c.		have increased the legal costs of firms that attempted to usethem
d.		have been successful in preventing loss of valuable employeescaused by poor termination decisions by managers
		e. are valued by Red Lobster employees part 2 Which of the following can we conclude from the article? Ms. Hatton was lying when she claimed that she pocketed thecomment intending to show it to her boss but forgot about the cardand inadvertently threw it out Ms. Hatton was telling the truth when she claimed that shepocketed the comment intending to show it to her boss but forgotabout the card and inadvertently threw it out On the day that she took the comment, Ms. Hatton was the onlyemployee who violated Red Lobster policy It was unusual for employees at the Pleasant Hills, PA RedLobster restaurant to go into the comment box All of the above None of the above part3) Which of the following are true according to the article? Pleaseselect all that apply. The peer review panel included hourly workers The peer review panel included salaried workers Members of the peer review panel all received peer-reviewtraining Red Lobster provided detailed guidelines to the peer reviewpanelists on how to decide the case The peer review panel included members who did not work for RedLobster The peer review panel included junior employees The peer review panel included senior managers part4) Which of the following are true according to the article? Pleaseselect all that apply. The manager who fired Ms. Hatton was dissatisfied with thedecision of the peer review panel Members of the peer review panel initially agreed with eachother The panel supported the decision of the manager who fired Ms.Hatton Members of the peer review panel eventually agreed with eachother