Broken toy which was a spacecraft. Showing texts “No violence intended” and “mindfultester.com/no-violence-intended”!

No violence intended

A few weeks ago I talked about a locker problem with a woman of my sport school.
“I put my stuff in locker 8, but the door came loose.”
She smiled:
“Thank you for reporting. We’ll pick this and ..”

“then I moved all my stuff to locker 6.”, I continued at the same pace.
The woman halted. Wrinkles of concern appeared on her face.
“I could not close the door, because there was no current. Then I moved all my stuff to locker 4.”

I waited for a moment.
The woman could not wait any longer:
“What went wrong this time?”
“This one was all right.”
The apologising smile was back on full strength.
I got another set of apologies and a promise to fix.

Incoming heading

What about the rest?

It is not my purpose to leave a trail of bug reports behind. I just noticed something and I shared this with someone who was really interested.

I did not use any violence to break the door off. The hinges had been clicked to the locker. They just unclicked and the woman rememberedthis within milliseconds. I was also Non Violent. I used an element of Non Violent Communication.

What I did, was to tell my observation in an objective way. I did not use any upsetting adjectives like stupid or dumb. It was just a door.

I did not have to use the other parts of model, the feeling the need, and the request. The woman had enough information to fix.

In my previous blog post I already mentioned Non Violent Communication. I realised that I did not write enough about the non violent part. So this is my rebound blog post.

Feeling

After the observation I could tell about my feeling. “I felt annoyed. ”
Wait a sec. Annoyed reads very offensive. It is a feeling that I had at that moment. I am writing for myself. It is not targeted at a person. I just had an experience and I was annoyed about it.

I know there are people who would consider this as an attack. This should not be the case. That is the responsibility of the person who hears my story.

Need

That’s a proper heading.

I had a need for perfection. As a tester I am aware that this is not always possible. But the opening and closing of the lockers can easily be arranged. Common technology I would write.

My need is personal. Some people might whine about it or like it. That is their responsibility. I am the boss of my own feelings and needs. Of course you can help me to determine them, but I can tell which are appropriate. To me.

Request

My request would be like:
“Would you please repair lockers 8 and 6?”

Please notice “Please”. This is a request. It is also used in other languages: bitte, s’il vous plaît, or alstublieft. It actually means: if it pleases you. So it is completely fair to disregard this request.

I just stress it again: it is no order. I am a customer and not a boss. The action would help me, who asks for this action. My bad feeling will go away and my need be fulfilled. That is rather pleasing. For me.

My sport school could do nothing with my request. Depending on previous requests from my side I could stop my subscription.

So I am heading to …

The closing section

Once I read a tweet of some one. I interpreted that this person had enough of a situation. I tweeted:
” I would determine my need and make a reasonable request.”

In my next blog post I will write about being Non Violent in the testing field.