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Showerthought: I sat in the DMV in Boise for 2 hours and watched the whole room organize itself without a single sign
I had to renew my license on a Tuesday morning and got there at 8:15, ticket number C-47. For the first half hour everyone just sat in rows staring at the board. Then a woman near the door started pointing people to the right window before they even pulled a ticket, and nobody asked her to. By 9:00 there were two guys sorting paperwork stacks on the counter and a teenager helping an older man use the kiosk. No staff member said a word about any of it. It hit me that people will build their own system in a room with no instructions, and it usually works better than the one that was planned. Anyone else notice a crowd self-organize like this somewhere? I keep wondering if it would happen the same way in a busier office.
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milam4821d ago
Something about "watched the whole room organize itself" really hits because I've seen this exact thing at the DMV in Reno, except there it backfired. This older guy appointed himself the line boss and started telling people the wrong window, so half the room ended up re-doing their paperwork twice. What actually made it work at yours is nobody was in charge, just people filling gaps where they saw someone struggling. My tip if you're ever stuck in a spot like that: watch who the room is already listening to before you jump in, because there's always one person everyone quietly follows and one person everyone ignores. Also the busier the office the uglier it gets, because more people means more chances for two self-appointed helpers to butt heads over the "right" way. Smaller rooms self-organize way better since everyone can see the whole space and nobody has to shout over a crowd.
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