argument117 【jet小组】第九次作业

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argument 117 The following is a memo from the business manager of Valu-Mart stores.

"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."
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This argument draws a conclusion that the office-supply departments of Valu-Mart stores will become the most profitable component if a series of changes will be taken. To substantiate this argument, a survey is cited by the arguer. However, a careful examination will show how groundless this conclusion is.

At first, the arguer provides a recent survey which shows that over 70 percent of the respondents are required to take more work home with them from the workplace than they were in the past. However, the survey is lack of statistic evidence to show how many works are required to take home and how long is from the past to present. It might the work which is needed to be done at home has increased 1 percent during the past decade. In this circumstance, increasing the stock of home office machines and supplies might not bring increasing profit.

Secondly, even if the work which is required to be done at home increased largely, to conclude that increasing the stock of home office machines and supplies would lead to increasing profit is hasty. There is no evidence to prove that the sample of the survey is random. It is quite possible that all the respondents are come from a certain group, which might be a small component of the whole group of workforce. Therefore, the sample is lack of representative, and large increase of homework in this small group would affect the whole need of home office related stuff little.

What is more, the arguer fails to prove that the increased homework would bring a boom in the need of home office machines and supplies. It is definitely possible that these works do not need printers, copy machines, paper, pens, and the like. Maybe all they should do is receive and send Emails through the internet, which would bring the actions of increasing the stock of home office related stuff futile, and the target of increasing profit would not become reality. If the arguer can not provide evidence to show that these works need home office machines and supplies, I can not be convinced that the manager’s action is rational.

In sum, this argument is full of flaws. To improve it, the arguer should offer more information to show that the sample of the survey is random and the increase of homework is not small. Moreover, the arguer should also prove that these works do need home office machines and supplies in order to assure the increasing of stocking would bring the office-supply departments the most profitable component of the stores.