The Memo That Didn't Say What It Meant
Rosa manages the stockroom at a hardware store with 11 other employees. On Monday she posts this memo on the break-room door: "Effective June 1, every return must be logged in the binder before the item goes back on the shelf. Last month 34 returned items could not be matched to a receipt. Staff who log returns correctly protect the store's refund credit and keep our shelves honest. The binder is not optional." A clerk reads it and says, "She's mad about the 34 items." A second clerk says, "No, she's just telling us where the binder is." Later that week, Rosa mentions that the memo was written after a district audit flagged the store's return records.
1. State the memo's main idea in one sentence. Then explain why "The binder is not optional" is a supporting detail rather than the main idea.
Read the worked answer
Main idea: Every return must be recorded in the binder before the item is reshelved, starting June 1.
Why the last sentence is a detail, not the main idea:
- The main idea is the action the reader must take. It appears in the first sentence, which carries the directive cues "Effective June 1" and "must be logged."
- "The binder is not optional" adds no new information - it restates the requirement with emphasis. Its job is tone (enforcement), not content.
- A test that works here: delete a sentence and see whether the point survives. Remove the last sentence and the memo still says what to do. Remove the first sentence and there is no instruction left at all.
- The 34 unmatched items are the reason; the refund credit is the consequence; the last sentence is the enforcement. Only the first sentence is the idea the other three support.
2. Both clerks read the same memo and reached different conclusions. Which reading is better supported by the text, and what does each clerk overlook?
Read the worked answer
Neither clerk is right, but the second is closer.
- Clerk 1 focuses on "34 returned items" and treats an emotional cause (anger) as the memo's point. The text never states a feeling; it states a problem and a fix.
- Clerk 2 correctly locates the instruction but stops there, ignoring the two sentences that explain why the instruction exists. "Just telling us where the binder is" also misses that the memo never actually says where the binder is.
- The structure of the memo is: instruction → evidence → consequence → enforcement. A reader who takes only one of those four parts will undershoot.
- A defensible reading: the purpose is to change a procedure, using the 34-item count as evidence and the refund credit as the reason it matters. The word "protect" is a purpose cue - memos use it to name what the instruction safeguards.
- Judgment call: it is fair to say Rosa is concerned, because the memo's emphatic ending signals that a previous reminder failed. It is not fair to say the memo's subject is her anger.
3. Rosa's later remark about the district audit adds a fact the memo does not contain. How does that change your understanding of what the memo is for and who it is really addressed to?
Read the worked answer
What changes:
- Read alone, the memo is a message from a manager to her own staff. With the audit detail, it is also a record - evidence that a flagged problem was corrected. That explains two features that otherwise seem odd: the memo is posted publicly rather than delivered verbally, and it ends with enforcement language rather than a request.
- "The binder is not optional" now reads as aimed partly at an outside reader who will check compliance, not only at the clerks.
What does not change:
- The instruction itself is the same either way, so the main idea stands.
- The audit is Rosa's statement, not part of the memo. A reader holding only the memo cannot know it. Mark it as an inference supported by her comment, not as something the document says.
- Caution: do not conclude the memo is dishonest for omitting the audit. Omitting a reason is not the same as contradicting one.