Situations for Opinions

• You interview people to find out how they feel about a large factory being built near their neighborhood.
• You are talking to a friend at work during a coffee break about the a new government tax increase.
• You are attending a meeting with other managers to talk about who should be promoted.
• You talk with a friend who is a nuclear engineer about a nuclear power plant being built in the neighborhood.
• You're a union official who wants to find out how workers feel about the proposed new contract. You have to ask several different types of people including coworkers that you are quite close to, people who work under you, upper management, and people from different departments that you don't know too well.
• You're a reporter for a local newspaper and you have to contact the upper management of a important local company to verify rumors that they are planning to merge with a large multi-national company.
• The wife of a friend who is a mother of three expresses her outrage with violence in the movies. You, in turn, express your opinion.
• You're holding a meeting with another more experienced manager to get some guidance before beginning work annual performance reviews for your staff. You talk about what factors are important in assessing a worker's performance.
• You're talking with an internet evangelist at a computer conference. You disagree with his vision of everything from shopping, cooking, reading, and driving being done on computers in the future.
• The government has just instituted a 10% value added tax (VAT). You're angry and end up expressing your opinion on the subject to almost everyone you talk to including the manager of your department, your priest, the wife of your close friend, the plumber who is repairing your sink, the woman at the register at the company cafeteria, to your wife, and your children, etc.
• You're in charge of marketing research for a teenage clothing producer. You've been attending several fashion shows recently and now you have to report back to the owners of your company on what you predict the hot fashions of next year will be.
• You're hired by a telemarketing company to call people up at home at dinner time and ask them about different products that they use including toilet paper, cloths washing detergent, paper towels, tampons, cigarettes, chewing gum, beer, etc.
• You're talking to a businessman from a country that is fiercely nationalistic. His country is currently fighting with another country over a small strip of land along their border. You ask him how he feels about the conflict.
• It looks like the annual company picnic is going to be canceled because the company has lost a lot of money this year. You talk to various people around the company both senior and junior to you about this.
• You're a computer programmer and a mother of two and your company has just suggested that you try telecommuting for a couple of days per week. You discuss the good and bad points of telecommuting with another programmer in your company who has been doing work this way for a year.
• The Starr Report which provides very intimate details about the American president's marital infidelities has been released. You talk about it with your friends and coworkers.
• You're attending an international conference on the environment. Some of the participants from other countries include logging companies and companies with large factories that pollute. They think they're working for the best interests of their countries. You think they're a little myopic.
• At dinner with your parents the conversation touches upon the recent strikes that threaten to paralyze the city. You're a factory worker who has strong opinions, but your father owns a small company and is always having problems with the unions.