argu 117 FLY AW 第十次作业

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"Over 70 percent of the respondents to a recent survey reported that they are required to take more work home with them from the workplace than they were in the past. Since Valu-Mart has not seen impressive sales in its office-supply departments in the past, we should take advantage of this work-at-home trend by increasing at all Valu-Mart stores the stock of home office machines such as printers, small copy machines, paper shredders, and fax machines. We will also increase stock of office supplies such as paper, pens, and staplers. With these changes, our office-supply departments will become the most profitable component of our stores."
字数：571          用时：上午 12:30:00          日期：2006-6-13

In this argument, the business manager recommends that some significant changes should be executed, through with the office-supply departments of Valu-Mart stores will perform the best among their stores, thus become most profitable. However, the haste manager commits a series of patent fallacies, which undermine his recommendation.
In the first place, the representative of the survey is dubious. The manager provides no evidence that the survey’s respondents are representative of the overall group of people who become increasingly taking work home. Without these relative materials, we cannot preclude the possibility that the respondents are all chosen from a few homogeneous companies. Additionally, whether the respondents have all told the truth is open to doubt, perhaps some faculties are not content with their companies, thus make up the phenomenon.
In the second place, the assumption that the requirement of taking work home will surely be implemented by the workers is unfounded. The memo overlooks the strong possibility that workers are more likely to accomplish their work at office, where they would not need to afford to the electricity and some other energy consumed while working.
Moreover, the arguer commits a fallacy of establishing a cause-and-effect relationship between utilizing the plan of increasing all Valu-Mart stores the stock of home office machines and would-be good sales in the office-supply departments. First, the manager assumes that the discontented sales in the past were largely due to the lack of stock. Yet in fact, he even does not take other possible factors which may influence the sales into consideration. Second, even the insufficient stock that leads to the poor sales, he cannot hastily deduce that the same reason will continue working in the future, and bring profits to their store.
Is the home office machines that the workers need? The author does not provide evidence that these machines should be used necessarily to work at home. Maybe some paper and pens could entirely fulfill average workers' requirements. Also, the manager does not analyze the essential reason why impressive sales attack the department in the past few months. Without these investigation, he cannot hastily get to the conclusion that it is lacking of stock that leads to dissatisfactory sales. Thus, the increasing in stocks in all stores is not only at great risk of overstock, but
Finally, the author also cannot guarantee that their office-supply department will become the most profitable component among their stores. This claim relies on the unlikely assumption that the cost will remain the same as ever before. However, in actuality, it is commonsense this kind of measure will carry significant opportunity costs- in terms of how the money might be spent toward addressing more pressing financial problems- as the stocks in the barn are accumulated, and the venture that stocks may not be sold out in time will also cost a lot more money.
In sum, the memo above suffers from several patent problems, which render the manager’s recommendation unconvincing as it stands. Without analyzing the essential reason that pull the sales down, and without providing the materials to prove authenticity and reliability of the survey, the manager fails to convince us that after augmenting some particular stocks, suck as home-used machines, the sales would be the most competitive among their stores. To strengthen his recommendation, the manager should also account for other factors that might influence the sales and investigate whether the workers need those home office machines as mentioned.

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