It was one afternoon when I was alone in the shop alone. My boss was out of her office in a meeting within town and my colleagues were out to make deliveries to our distributors outside the town. It was just after high school and was working for Jewelry Company in my hometown. I was barely one month old in the company, and that day had been asked just to take of everything.
In that afternoon, a customer walked in to the mall straight to our shop and asked for an engagement ring. Having surveyed the variety of rings in the shop, he selected one diamond ring that price tag had been defaced. He asked about its price. Enthusiastic to sell the ring, though not sure about its actual price, I quickly responded, “twelve thousand dollars.” The customer turned his face looked straight in to my eyes, as if to confirm if I was sure.
Glancing back at him, I affirmed my confidence. The other range of the costs displayed on the shelf guided my advice. I went on to explain the features of the ring and how genuine it was, convincing him to buy the ring from us. He finally bought the ring, making me feel happy that I had made a great sale. As the customer left, my bossed immediately walked in. Curious to know what I had sold and how much I had sold it, she came straight to the counter and checked the receipt book.
It later turned out that the diamond ring was marked up at twenty five thousand dollars. I could not explain myself, and for the first time in my life hated myself for making such an assumption. Three week later, I received a letter of dismissal quoting a ‘recent event’ a proof of my incompetence.
The Standards of Critical Thinking: analysis of my decision
Some people, if in a similar situation as I was in, could have chosen to do exactly as I did and committed the same mistake that I made. Being new and enthusiastic to build oneself a name in new work environment, one would hastily use any given opportunity at the expense of other interests of the business. The standards of critical thinking requires one to be accurate, precise, relevant, logical, fair, clear, and deep in thought and decisions making. The absence of any one of these standards weakens the critical thinking process and eventually resulting a poor decision making (Bassham, Irwin, Nardone, and Wallace 11).
In my decision described above, which actually was founded on a serious assumption, the greatest barrier to critically thinking and decision making processes was lacking in accuracy, fairness, logic, clarity and depth. I assumed that because the diamond ring was removed from near others with price tags of twelve thousand dollar, the ring must cost the same. Even without involving efforts to confirm from colleagues, or my boss or in even in the neighboring shop I went ahead and sold the ring at half the price (Chaffee 52).
I did not involve any critical thinking skill at all, and I ended up making a poor and a costly decision. At that moment, I felt great because of an imagined achievement. The decisions cost my first job leave a lone a loss of thirteen thousand dollars to the business in one day. This kind of situation happens every day to people. Many have at least at one point in time been victims of careless or weak decision making resulting from lack of critically thinking. Today I appreciate the doctrine of critical thinking.
Works Cited:
Bassham, Gregory, William Irwin, Henry Nardone, and James M Wallace. Critical thinking: A Student’s introduction. New York: McGraw-Hill International Edition, 2010 (1) 9-15
Chaffee, John. Thinking critically. Boston: Houghton, 2004 (6) 48-55
Gregory, Bassham. Critical Thinking: A Student's Introduction. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2004 (2) 524-530
