Office Moods

Absorbing mistakes changes everything because the mood in the office stays stable.

Here's a real scene as I worked Front Desk.

My teammate, an Examiner and 74 years old, when handwriting details onto the exam sheet — which takes about 4 minutes with patter — messed up which means a hand rewrite from scratch.

In front of a crowd.

In front of the crowd that is now 4 minutes behind because of the Examiner who's patter just soured by 60%.

The second screw up happened as I checked in a new Customer for the shop, punctuated with the Examiner slamming a frustrated hand onto the Front Desk.

An examination facility, mood in the office is everything.

Anyone coming in for a exam is already nervous, and here we have a grumbling old chunk of coal getting ready for a 3rd rewrite before administering a cranky test.

Nononononononono. Not good. Think of the reviews.

In the most sub-nominal circumstances two rewrites killed all joy for the entire day.

When this happened — and it did regular enough I developed a strategy — I slipped into crowd-work to diffuse the stress bombs.

My Examiner-friend is gonna to take a 3 minute break before getting into the test, everyone, to reboot themselves. You, what's your 3rd favorite movie from last year?

To the Examiner I handed over Baby Boomer kryptonite, fancy chocolates, and sent 'em in back while pumping up crowd with silly questions and sparks for stories from the audience.

(It's Colorado. I would start dosing 'em with edibles if I didn't build the compliance tool.)