Code Box Panic

I work at several online jobs, one of which is as a content moderator for a company called Bazaar Voice, which provides software and related services to clients in the area of what is known as social commerce, or marketing via customer generated content, such as product reviews, questions and answers, stories, and so forth. My job is to read, evaluate, accept, reject, code and comment on content submitted by customers of Bazaar Voice's clients.

In addition to a set of basic rules applicable to all content, most individual clients also have personalized guidelines governing their own content, sometimes clarifying, usually adding to or modifying the general instructions. Depending on the specific guidelines applied, we often have to click a small checkbox corresponding to a certain code, and usually write a comment to explain what we've checked and why. 

As I said, these checkboxes are small, so using the mouse to click on them can get a bit time consuming. Since we work under time constraints "hot keys" have been assigned that allow moderators to use the keyboard instead of the mouse to check most boxes, which speeds up the process a little. When you're processing hundreds of product reviews each day, your hand gets into a routine: A for Accept, R for Reject, 2 for this code, 3 for that, 5 for another, and so forth. (Bear with me, I'm getting to the miracle -  this background stuff is necessary to understand it.)

So it was a little over a week ago, on Tuesday November 30 to be exact. I was nearing the end of my shift, working on a batch of nearly four hundred reviews for one client. I process a lot of reviews for this particular client and have the individual guidelines and hot keys just about memorized.




Even so, as I always do, I pulled up the guidelines and looked them over just to refresh my memory before starting to work. 

This large batch was divided up into four smaller batches. I'd finished and checked in three of those, totaling about 150 reviews, and just started on the fourth and largest batch when all of a sudden I noticed a new code in the "9" place, the exact place as a different, very-often-used code. A new code had been inserted to the left of the old one, moving the old one from the "9" place to the "0" place! Oh NO! In memory I could just feel my hand hitting that "9" key - over and over and over again. Many of the reviews just finished had required it. Oh no!! Beginning to panic, heart in throat, stomach lurching, I quickly pulled up the guidelines and, sure enough, there at the top, in red letters I had somehow failed to see, was a notice about the new code, explaining what it was for and when to check it. 

Hastily I went back to the current batch of reviews, remembering I'd just hit that "9" key a few reviews back. I quickly scrolled up to see but somehow the right code box was checked. 

"Okaay," I thought, "Whew. I must have hit the "0" by accident, thank goodness."

Feeling sick about those others already checked in, but lacking time to go back and look just then, I resolved to finish the current batch correctly, being extra careful to hit the right key, that "0" key and not the "9" key. Even so, there were a few where I was sure I had hit the "9" instead (it's really hard to overcome an automatic habit like that!) but then looked at the screen only to see the right box checked nevertheless. I'd been praying, asked God to help me do it right and not check the wrong box, and so I just thanked Him, and prayed again for help. There had been one review that required the new code, the one now using the "9" hotkey that had previously been for the other code. That one was somehow correctly checked too, though I didn't remember deliberately checking it. I went back over that last batch, double-checking that no wrong boxes had been checked accidentally, and none had. 

But there was still the matter of the previously checked-in 150 reviews to be dealt with, the ones I'd done before I saw the new checkbox and the note about the change. I didn't think I could rightly just ignore them, not when I remembered my finger hitting that "9" key so many times, thereby incorrectly checking the new code box and not the one I intended. That could create a problem for my employer when the client found so many incorrect codes checked, so I guessed I had to 'fess up even though I sure wasn't happy about having to admit to such an oversight.  

Although it was too late to change what had already been checked in, we do have the ability to look at recent past work, so I decided I'd go back and look at those assignments, copy the id numbers from the ones I'd gotten wrong, and then paste those in an email to the supervisors, explaining what had happened, hoping they could somehow intercept the reviews before they got published to the client's website, and hoping I wouldn't be in too much hot water for it. 

So, reluctantly, I pulled up the first batch and began to scroll through them. As I did, I saw that on the ones that had required the old code, the one now moved to the "0" spot, the correct box was checked, even though I knew I'd been hitting the "9" instead of "0." Jaw starting to drop, chills beginning to march down the back of my neck, I scrolled all the way through that batch to see not one single instance of a wrong box checked. I pulled up the next batch, then the next. On all three batches, the correct "0" codes were checked in all cases, and there were quite a few. But not one single box was wrongly checked. And none of the reviews had even required the application of the new code. 

I never did have to send that email. Coincidence? Not a chance
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Before they call I will answer, while they are yet speaking I will hear. (Isaiah 65:24)

Photo credit: star5112 at Flickr.com