Communication

Dracy Lockett

Business Communications and Critical Thinking

Communication Process Model

Lisa Newman

1/24/14

Communication Process Model

The sender of this communication is the clerk at the information center at the Milwaukee County Court House and I am the receiver. The message is that I need to drop eviction papers off the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s office and I stopped at the information center for directions. The channel used to send this message was the face to face conversation I had with the clerk.

The misunderstanding that occurred were her directions on how to get to the sheriff’s office, which was clear, but not clear on where to drop the eviction paperwork off once I was there. She stated, “Walk down the corridor and drop the papers of at the window on the left, hand them to the clerk who will then stamp them and give you a receipt”. So I did exactly that. I ended up dropping the papers off to the wrong window because it was supposed to be dropped off at window A and I dropped them off at the first window on the left. The sheriff’s office moved its office a week earlier. I didn’t know because there was no indication stating that the window was no longer the drop of location for eviction papers. Therefore, since it was dropped off at the wrong location, the eviction papers were not processed, which was not good. Since this happened, the tenant got to stay in the property for another 30 days, which cost the company money. I had to go back and try to locate the paperwork, get it to the right location, and have them expedite it to get on the courts calendar. I later found out that the paperwork was for a tenant who owned the company a lot of money.

How could the misunderstanding have been avoided? This could have been avoided if the clerk at the information center would have said to me, “drop this paperwork off at window A down the hallway”, and then tell me that the sheriff’s office had moved. The lesson I learned was, once I got to the window...