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Got roasted by a corrections officer for my 'too complicated' inmate skills tracking chart, so I redid it all with just emojis and colors
I used to use this detailed spreadsheet with 12 columns for tracking things like GED progress and anger management class attendance, but one CO told me it looked like tax paperwork, so now I use a green check for completed work, yellow circle for in progress, and red X for missed, and somehow the guys actually check their own status now.
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margaretramirez1mo ago
omg my friend tried this at her halfway house job and the guys started making their own emoji updates before she could even get to the board lol. she said they argued over whether a blue dot should mean "working on it" or "almost done".
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That thing about them arguing over the blue dot hits close to home... I had the same thing happen where two guys in my unit got into a whole debate about whether a purple star meant "extra help needed" or "I helped someone else today." It's wild how they take ownership of it once you keep it simple enough. Sounds like your friend is onto something real there, the emoji system just clicks with people in a way that spreadsheets never could. I think that's the whole secret honestly, make it so they want to engage with it instead of feeling like they're being graded.
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daniel_gonzalez1mo ago
@the_terry nailed it with that purple star story, sounds exactly like the kind of thing that happens when people actually care about the system. My chart was so bad the CO told me to "take it back to accounting" so I know the pain of overcomplicating things. The blue dot debate is hilarious though, maybe the real solution is just giving them all the emojis and letting them sort it out themselves. They're way more invested when they get to argue about the meaning instead of me explaining it for the tenth time. I'm just glad my red Xs don't start fistfights, that would be a whole new level of tracking failure.
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