Which Incident Type Is Limited To One Operational Period
Ever have one of those days? You know the kind. Where everything just… happens all at once. Like a rogue popcorn kernel that escapes the microwave and bounces off the ceiling fan. You’re just trying to have a chill movie night, and suddenly it’s a high-stakes chase scene with a rogue piece of popped corn. That, my friends, is what I like to call a “Single-Shot Situation.”
Now, in the grand, often bewildering world of incident management, we talk about a lot of different types of messes. There are the big, sprawling ones that feel like they’re going to take a national holiday to sort out. Think of a massive power outage that has the whole city blinking like a disco ball. Those are definitely not single-shot. They’re more like a multi-season epic with several cliffhangers.
Then you have the “slow burn” incidents. The ones that creep up on you. Like a mysterious odor in the office breakroom that starts subtly but then becomes a full-blown olfactory assault. These bad boys can linger for days, sometimes weeks, leaving a trail of bewildered sniffles and whispered accusations. Definitely not our single-shot hero.
But there’s a special category. A breed apart. An incident so fleeting, so… in and out, that it’s almost shy. It’s the one that shows up, causes a mild kerfuffle, and then vanishes faster than a free donut at the morning meeting. I’m talking, of course, about the “One-and-Done Wonder.”
What kind of incident fits this description? Ah, you’re looking for specifics. Let me paint you a picture. Imagine you’re proudly showcasing your amazing new spreadsheet to your boss. It’s got all the charts, all the graphs, all the… fancy formatting. You hit ‘save.’ And then… nothing. The screen freezes. The cursor does a little jig. And your masterpiece is gone. Poof! Like a magician’s rabbit, but less cute and way more stressful. That’s a “Computer Glitch Galore.” It’s a one-off. It happened, you rebooted, and life (and your spreadsheet, hopefully) went on. It had its moment, its fifteen minutes of fame in the chaos hall of fame, and then it was outta here.
Or consider the classic “Misplaced Keys Moment.” You’re ready to go. Bag packed, shoes on, car keys in hand. Or so you thought. Ten minutes of frantic pocket-patting, bag-rummaging, and cushion-flipping later, you find them. Tucked away in the fruit bowl. Or chilling in the fridge. It was a brief, intense period of mild panic, a singular burst of disarray. Once those keys are found, the “misplaced keys incident” is officially over. It doesn’t morph into a “lost car for a week” scenario. It’s a self-contained drama.
Another shining example? The “Accidental Email Avalanche.” You meant to send that sensitive company secret to your colleague, Brenda. But your finger, in a moment of pure, unadulterated mischief, hovered over the ‘reply all’ button. And suddenly, the entire company knows about your secret chocolate stash. Oops. That momentary lapse, that single, ill-fated click, is the whole incident. Once you’ve sent the mortified follow-up apology, the email incident is done. It doesn’t have legs. It doesn’t decide to send out more embarrassing emails later. It’s a contained explosion of awkwardness.
My personal favorite, though, has to be the “Sudden Sock Solitude.” You’re doing laundry, a noble and often overlooked chore. You pull out a perfectly good shirt, and then… a single, forlorn sock. Where is its mate? Did it elope with a rogue dust bunny? Did it achieve sentience and stage a daring escape to a land of lost socks? The investigation might take a minute, but the incident of the single sock is confined to that one load of laundry. It doesn't become a “never-ending laundry nightmare” incident. It’s just a lonely sock, and the operational period for addressing that specific sock’s solitude is blessedly short.
So, while we wrestle with the big, hairy, multi-day monsters of incident management, let’s not forget these unsung heroes. The quick, the fleeting, the wonderfully self-limiting. The incidents that, by their very nature, are born and die within a single, glorious, and often slightly comical, operational period. They’re the popcorn kernel that hits the floor and stays there. A brief moment of disruption, then life goes on. And isn’t that, in its own way, a little bit beautiful?