> I gotta say, I'm surprised that this needed to be explained to the manager. If someone asks a worker whether they want to do something and the worker say "no"

> I gotta say, I'm surprised that this needed to be explained to the manager. If someone asks a worker whether they want to do something and the worker say "no", the manager's instinct is to panic and escalate before trying to clarify anything? It's possible those attempts were left out of the story for narrative reasons - it is, like you said, a good example for the article. But let's pretend they weren't and that is how it actually went down: The manager is human and will not navigate every given situation optimally. Hopefully organizations will become increasingly aware of this over time and continuously improve the methodology for selecting and training future managers.