Employee: Vernon's behavior in last month's incident was certainly unprofessional enough that our company was justifi...

kendalla14 on June 3, 2020

Can someone break down these answer choices for me?

I narrowed it down to B, D, E, but I didn't know how to pick between them.

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Skylar on June 3, 2020

@kendalla14, happy to help!

We are told that Vernon's unprofessional behavior was justification for the company firing him. However, other employees acted in an equally unprofessional manner but were not fired. Therefore, the passage concludes that Vernon must be rehired "for the sake of consistency."

As we are reading this, we should notice a jump in logic toward the end of the passage. We know that Vernon and the other employees acted in the same way but received different outcomes. Based on this, the passage assumes that Vernon's outcome should be changed to match the other employees for consistency's sake (AKA Vernon should be rehired). Yet, how do we know that it isn't the other way around? In other words, how can we eliminate the idea that the other employees' outcomes should be changed to match that of Vernon's outcome (AKA the other employees should also be fired)? This is the flaw in the argument, which makes (E) the best answer. (E) states that the flaw is "inferring that one specific response to a problem (rehiring Vernon) is necessary without considering another equally supported response (firing the other employees)."

Evaluating the passage's logic before proceeding to the answer choices can help us to gain a clearer understanding of the flaw at hand and to prevent us from getting stuck between multiple answer choices. I'd recommend trying this strategy going forward. Nevertheless, if you do find yourself stuck between a few choices, we can eliminate incorrect answers by thinking critically. (B) is incorrect because this passage isn't calling for sufficient/necessary diagramming nor is it confusing sufficient and necessary variables. Similarly, (D) is incorrect because the passage does not confuse sometimes with always. We know that the unprofessional action does not always result in employees keeping their jobs because we are specifically told that it did not result in this for Vernon. Therefore, (B) and (D) can be eliminated because they are not applicable.

Does that make sense? Please let us know if you have any other questions!