Week 11 — Above the Floor: A Bookshop Prices Its First Hire

Assignment 10 of the term — plan a job, price a hire, and weigh the legal floor on pay against what is fair.

This adaptive assignment uses a coaching dialogue to help you turn a first attempt into a clear, checkable analysis. You remain the author. The coach asks questions, checks the work you show, and waits for you to revise before it produces the required report. This week's lecture tutorial, quiz, discussion, and Business Case Workshop practise the same ideas from other angles; this assignment is where you put a job analysis, recruitment and selection, a hiring plan, and the line between the legal floor and what is fair together on one small case.

The task

The case is illustrative, built for this course and not real data. A small neighborhood bookshop is hiring its first part-time clerk. Like the coffee cart in this week's chapter, the case has no named people.

The bookshop's plan, line by line:

• The clerk's tasks, from the owner's job analysis: shelve new arrivals, ring up sales, and help customers find a title.
• The qualities the owner wants: reliable on weekend mornings, comfortable with a card reader, and happy to talk about books.
• Hours: 24 hours a week.
• Weeks worked: 40 weeks a year.
• Hourly wage the owner plans to pay: 15 dollars an hour.
• The federal minimum wage under the Fair Labor Standards Act (1938): 7.25 dollars an hour since 2009; a state may set a higher one.

Work these two problems, showing every step of the arithmetic:

1. What are the clerk's yearly wages, in dollars?
2. How many dollars a year above the federal floor does the bookshop's wage choice cost, for the same hours?

Beside each answer, add a brief interpretation:

• Problem 1: write one line of the clerk's job description and one line of the job specification from the case, and say which list each belongs on and why; then name one recruitment step and one selection step the bookshop could use, and say why each one fills the pool or chooses from it.
• Problem 2: say what federal law requires on the wage and why 7.25 dollars is a floor rather than one national number; apply one of the ethical-reasoning questions (is it legal; is it fair to everyone it touches; would I be comfortable if it were public) to the owner's wage choice; then give one reason an owner might pay above the floor and one reason an owner might pay near it, labelling each as a judgment.

Explain it to a non-expert

A cousin starting a first part-time job asks you, "My manager says the store pays the minimum wage. Does that mean 7.25 dollars an hour everywhere, and if it's legal, is it automatically fair?" Write a 3–5 sentence message that explains the minimum wage in everyday words, answers both parts of the question, and names one limit, including that the bookshop case is illustrative and that which minimum applies to a real job is a question for the Department of Labor or a state labor office, not for a classmate. Explain any technical term in everyday words. More than one good answer is possible.

For a different, ungraded example, imagine a neighbor who organizes volunteers for a community garden and asks whether putting up a flyer and choosing volunteers are the same step. Model answer: "Putting up the flyer is recruitment: it gets people interested so you have a group to pick from. Choosing who joins is selection: you look at who signed up, maybe ask a few questions, and decide. They are two different steps, and a great flyer still leaves you with the choosing to do. This is general advice about how hiring works, and a garden with special rules might do it differently."

Use that pattern for your cousin, with your own wording and evidence.

Part 1 — Student instructions

1. Draft both answers, both interpretations, and your message to your cousin before opening a chatbot.
2. Open any course-approved chatbot. Copy the entire Coach Prompt box, including its first and last marker lines, and paste it as one message. The coach will ask for your draft and then work one question at a time.
3. Answer in your own words. Show each step of the arithmetic when asked. Use the coach's feedback to revise at least one number or explanation, even if your first attempt was correct.
4. Continue until the prompt's exit condition is met.
5. Save the chat's share link and copy the final report exactly as the coach gives it.

The chatbot is a coach, not a ghostwriter. It must draw out your reasoning rather than write the work for you.

Coach Prompt

COPY EVERYTHING BELOW THIS LINE
ROLE: You are a careful learning coach for an introduction-to-business course. Draw out and challenge MY thinking about a job analysis, recruitment and selection, a hiring plan's yearly wages, and the line between the legal floor on pay and what is fair. Do not write my assignment for me, do not invent work I did not show, never invent a statistic, a study, a survey, a quotation, a wage figure, any state's minimum wage, or a fact about a real company, and never tell me what the law requires of a real employer or a real job; point me to the Department of Labor or a state labor office instead.

ASSIGNMENT: Work through these two problems in order, one at a time. Do not invent, replace, or reorder a problem. The case: an illustrative neighborhood bookshop, built for my course and not real data. The owner's job analysis lists the clerk's tasks (shelve new arrivals, ring up sales, help customers find a title) and the qualities wanted (reliable on weekend mornings, comfortable with a card reader, happy to talk about books). In this course, a job description lists the tasks and duties of a job and a job specification lists the skills and qualities a person needs; recruitment draws qualified people into a pool of applicants and selection chooses whom to hire from it; yearly wages are weekly hours times weeks worked times the hourly wage; the Fair Labor Standards Act (1938) sets the federal minimum wage, which has been 7.25 dollars an hour since 2009, and many states set higher ones; legality asks whether the law allows an act and ethics asks what is right beyond the law; and the ethical-reasoning questions are: is it legal; is it fair to everyone it touches; would I be comfortable if it were public.
PROBLEM P1: In the illustrative neighborhood bookshop, the owner plans one part-time clerk at 24 hours a week for 40 weeks a year at 15 dollars an hour. What are the clerk's yearly wages, in dollars?
PROBLEM P2: In the illustrative neighborhood bookshop, the clerk earns 15 dollars an hour for 24 hours a week over 40 weeks, and the federal minimum wage is 7.25 dollars an hour. For the same hours, how many dollars a year above the federal floor does the bookshop's wage choice cost?
After the two answers, I must interpret each one: for P1, write one line of the job description and one line of the job specification from the case, saying which list each belongs on and why, and name one recruitment step and one selection step the bookshop could use, saying why each fills the pool or chooses from it; for P2, say what federal law requires on the wage and why 7.25 dollars is a floor rather than one national number, apply one ethical-reasoning question to the owner's wage choice, and give one reason to pay above the floor and one reason to pay near it, each labelled as a judgment. I must then write a 3-5 sentence message to a cousin starting a first part-time job, explaining the minimum wage, answering whether it means 7.25 dollars everywhere and whether legal means fair, and naming one limit, including that the case is illustrative and that which minimum applies to a real job is a question for the Department of Labor or a state labor office. I must explain technical terms in everyday words.

SCORING CRITERIA: Score only evidence I supply: correct numbers (20 points), business reasoning (48 points), clarity for a non-expert reader (20 points), and showing the work so it can be checked (12 points). For each of P1 and P2, give 2, 1, or 0 evidence units per criterion; one unit is worth 5 number points, 12 reasoning points, 5 clarity points, or 3 showing-the-work points. Sum both problems within each criterion. Count my final message only with P2, not again with P1.
NUMBER UNITS: A correct amount = 2; an amount that is off because of one arithmetic slip or one missed line, with the work shown = 1; a missing amount or one with no work behind it = 0.
REASONING UNITS: For P1, BOTH a description line and a specification line placed on the right lists with a reason AND one recruitment step and one selection step sorted with a reason = 2; exactly one of those parts = 1; neither = 0. For P2, BOTH the federal floor explained (the Fair Labor Standards Act, 7.25 dollars since 2009, states may set higher) AND an ethical-reasoning question applied with one reason to pay above the floor and one to pay near it, each labelled as a judgment, plus a cousin's message that explains the floor and names a limit = 2. If full P2 evidence is absent but at least one accurate substantive part appears, give 1. No accurate reasoning = 0; naming a term alone does not earn a unit, and reading recruiting as hiring, swapping the description and the specification, treating 7.25 dollars as the minimum everywhere, treating "it's legal" as settling whether a wage is fair, or giving a confident legal answer for a real job is not accurate. An arithmetic slip alone is not a reasoning error.
CLARITY UNITS: For each problem, labelled evidence understandable to someone new to business, with technical terms explained = 2; intelligible evidence that needs rereading because of ambiguity or jargon = 1; absent or unintelligible evidence = 0. Include the final message with P2 if submitted. Missing reasoning alone does not lower clarity for otherwise clear submitted work.
SHOWING-THE-WORK UNITS: For each problem, the subtraction and multiplications that lead to the amount, written out with their numbers = 2; some steps shown but the amount cannot be fully rebuilt = 1; an amount alone or no work = 0. Visible work stays checkable despite an arithmetic slip.

Do NOT invent grading rules.

DIALOGUE RULES: Ask exactly one question per message and wait for my answer. Start by asking for my complete first attempt. Build each next question from my exact words. Probe an unsupported claim and ask me to examine its evidence. Keep the conversation focused on questions rather than completed work.

ENGAGEMENT GUARDS: A greeting, copied prompt, yes/no reply, or one-word answer is not a substantive exchange. Do not flatter or accept agreement as evidence. Praise only a concrete move I made. If evidence is missing, say what is missing and ask for it. Require a real revision plus a short reflection on why the revision is better. Do not issue the report early.

EXIT CONDITION: Continue until at least five substantive exchanges have occurred AND I have supplied both answers and their interpretations AND written my message to the cousin AND revised at least one number or explanation AND reflected on the revision. Stop only after whichever requirement happens last.

REPORT: After the exit condition is satisfied, output exactly these labelled lines in this order. Replace X with the exact earned score and do not round it. Base every line only on evidence in this chat; write "Not supplied" for missing evidence and never raise the score for polished chatbot prose.
STUDENT'S SCORE: X/100
EVIDENCE FOR THE SCORE: [specific evidence from my numbers, work, and reasoning]
REVISION MADE: [what I changed and why]
STRENGTH: [one earned strength]
NEXT STEP: [one concrete improvement]
Then tell me to submit this report, my revised work, and the share link.
COPY EVERYTHING ABOVE THIS LINE

Deliverables

Submit these three items in the assignment entry:

• your revised work with both answers, their interpretations, and your message to your cousin — written, or recorded as audio or video with a transcript, or as a labelled sketch of the bookshop's hiring plan and the federal floor with a short note; every form is graded by the same scoring criteria;
• the coach's five-line report; and
• the conversation share link.

Submit in any accessible file type or as a link; a recorded response may be submitted as audio or video with a transcript, or as text.

Equivalent route (no AI required)

This route assesses the same Week 11 skills — writing a job description and a job specification, telling recruitment from selection, pricing a hiring plan, weighing a wage against the federal floor while keeping what is legal apart from what is fair, and explaining the idea to someone new to business — for comparable time and effort, about 60 to 90 minutes, the same as the coached route. Complete the same two problems, both interpretations, and the message to your cousin. Then audit your own first draft against the attached scoring criteria, criterion by criterion, and write a second draft. Add a 150–200 word revision memo that names one number or explanation you changed, the evidence that prompted the change, and one question you still have. Submit the revised work, your completed criteria checklist, and the revision memo in the assignment entry; together they replace the share link and the coach's report. This route uses the same scoring criteria and the same points, with no penalty for choosing it.

How you'll be graded

The full analytic rubric is attached to this assignment in Canvas.

Academic integrity and AI use

The numbers, the work, the reasoning, the revision, and the final report must be your own. Do not ask the chatbot to create the assignment or add evidence you did not produce, and do not let it invent facts about the bookshop, a wage figure, or any real company. Submit an honest share link from your own dialogue. The equivalent route keeps the same workload and evidence and requires no AI account.

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