my office has a sticker chart for our feelings

by Alison Green on July 15, 2024

A reader writes:

I work in an office of a large company. The work my team does is often stressful, so sometimes staff morale suffers.

The managers of my team have created a feelings chart that has giant emoji representing various levels of being happy, stressed, and angry. There are stickers of all our names that we’re meant to put next to the emoji representing how we’re feeling about work at the start and end of the day.

If participation were fully voluntary, I’d consider it peculiar but largely harmless. However, it’s compulsory and participation is sometimes enforced. One day recently, they stalled starting a staff meeting until everyone’s stickers were placed.

Perhaps they have good intentions, but I find it unsettling. I’m selective about who I discuss my feelings with. More importantly, in a team of our size, we almost certainly have at least a few people dealing with mental health challenges or difficult personal circumstances. When I was struggling through work while suffering from depression, if my manager had forced me to frequently state my feelings, it would have made me even more miserable. I also worry about how responses could be used against us, perhaps by using the presence of positive responses to silence people who believe the job is too stressful or difficult.

Plus, while it’s supposedly designed to help identify people who need extra help to get all their work done. However, I’ve had my sticker on a negative emotion for a week and haven’t received assistance. I’m not aware of anyone else who has received assistance based on where they put their sticker either, so it’s unclear if the data is being used for anything.

Should I play along by providing benign answers or push back? If I should push back, how do you suggest framing that?

I answer this question over at Inc. today, where I’m revisiting letters that have been buried in the archives here from years ago (and sometimes updating/expanding my answers to them). You can read it here.

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{ 102 comments }

{ 102 comments… read them below }

  1. Ultimate Facepalm*

    Wasn’t there a recent story about someone who changed their sticker on the feeling chart right after she resigned / before she left?

      1. Stella*

        We all got magnetic Self-Esteem Mood Meters to stick up in our offices. I’m fairly certain the bosses knew we weren’t going to take them seriously, but I kept mine because it amuses me. Here are the (all positive) options: unique, confident, caring, loving, hard-working, energetic, self-accepting, playful, daring, and determined. There’s a little magnetic arrow that says “Today’s Self-Esteem,” and you’re supposed to point the arrow to today’s answer. At least this was completely optional!

        1. General von Klinkerhoffen*

          “Self-accepting” – accepting that I’m not going to achieve jack today. Approach with caution.

        2. Pita Chips*

          Fascinating set of choices. I wonder what my psychologist friend would make of them.

          I would not use loving in an office setting, that feels weird to me. So does playful. If I was working in a pet store, those might be appropriate.

          I’d probably stick mine on either unique or hard-working and leave it there.

          1. jez chickena*

            Not use playful? Does no one kid around with their colleagues anymore?

            My coworkers and I were reviewing an advance copy of a marketing workshop we are running with a partner. The PowerPoint presentation has a photo of the guys at the tradeshow booth. Since I was not pictured, they grabbed my headshot LinkedIn photo and put my head on the table.

            We cannot stop Teams chatting about it.

        3. used to be a tester*

          If I see anyone’s arrow pointed at ‘loving’, I’m staying away from them. I do NOT want an impromptu hug!

  2. Mostly Managing*

    I used a similar chart with my child when they were struggling with expressing emotions. It was very helpful. The child was not yet school aged.

    This is infantalizing.

    In my current job, the chair starts department meetings with a “check in”. We go around the table and each say how things are going. But it’s nearly always all work-related. “I got the grant.” “I’m swamped this month, so don’t be surprised when I’m hard to reach.” “I actually got the software to do what it’s supposed to!”

    The way it’s done is actually helpful because we have to work on things together but are not often all in the office together.
    Saying “how I feel” each day would make me job hunt.

    1. Charlotte Lucas*

      Yes! These kinds of things are meant for kids who are still learning how to recognize and verbalize their feelings. Not full-grown adults.

    2. Harper the Other One*

      The department I’m currently working with has a weekly meeting where you have the option of a weekly high and low, which can be work or personal – but you can also just bypass it. To me it’s the perfect combination: there have been personal things I’ve wanted my colleagues to know so they’d understand why I was slower to respond etc., but there’s no pressure to participate or reveal information you don’t want to share.

      1. Siege*

        Yeah, my boss doesn’t understand what an icebreaker is and usually has us do rose and thorn in the monthly staff meeting. It’s basically mandatory but it’s fine to share very innocuous stuff, so I focus more of my annoyance on the fact that we don’t need to do an icebreaker; we’ve worked together for years.

      2. allathian*

        Yes, my team’s doing the same thing and I like it. It’s mostly focused on work but sometimes people share more personal things, too. But I work in a good environment where coworkers and managers realize that we’re all human and can’t always be at the top of our game.

    4. Frodo*

      Elementary school teacher here. We use a similar chart called the Mood Meter. Definitely for the under 8 group.

    5. Resume please*

      Deeply infantalizing. And none of us where I work are mental health experts, so if someone’s mood is “low” it’s a few even more infantalizung virtual headpats and pouts towards that person before everyone goes back to their work. I’m always set at neutral. And these meetings are made even more pointless by being first thing in the morning. It’s rare people ask about being Neutral, and when they ask why I’m not Happy or High Energy, etc, I just say “Oh, never in the morning. Not a morning person!” as friendly as possible.

  3. HailRobonia*

    I immediately thought of Maeby from Arrested Development and her report card… “Math makes Maseby feel (image of sun and clouds). Science makes Maeby feel (I think it’s Elvis’s face?), etc.

  4. Anonymel*

    I would slip a copy of this question and Alison’s answer under you boss’s door or into their in box or something. If that doesn’t make them think twice, they’re 100% lacking in awareness. Otherwise, my sticker would be on the most neutral emoji possible (or a WTF face if possible!) and then just leave it there in perpetuity. If everyone does that, management will have to accept that it’s not accomplishing what they thought it would.

    1. Chauncy Gardener*

      My thoughts exactly!
      Just keep it in neutral (they’re obviously not doing anything with the info anyway).

    2. Moira Rose's Speech Patterns*

      Enforced mindfulness often goes hand in hand with toxic positivity. Ick.

      I’d be tempted to get a set of Schitts Creek stickers made and use those.

      2. Goldenrod*

        “I’d be tempted to get a set of Schitts Creek stickers made and use those.”

        Oooh I love that! (Love your commenter name too. ;D)

        Especially since that cast has such expressive faces: Today, in the morning I felt “David looking gobsmacked” but by the end of the day I felt “Moira looking very pleased with herself.”

      3. Grapes are my Jam*

        Love this! I would continually switch between ‘Disgruntled Pelican’ and ‘Eat glass!!’

      4. Cinnamon Stick*

        Double-plus ick. Not saying mindfulness is a bad thing, but from what I’ve read the “experts” who bring it into the office are not necessarily trained therapists and are just trying to make a quick bucks with a quick fix.

  6. Caramel & Cheddar*

    This is obviously ridiculous, but I feel like it’s also a spiritual cousin to all those ice breaker exercises where they want you to share something way too personal. This is where you stick to the letter of the law and not the spirit by choosing the most neutral sticker you can find and leave it there every single day.

    You can definitely try to push back, but the way they crack down on people for not participating suggests to me they genuinely think this exercise is important (despite not doing anything with the info!) rather than just some goofy fun thing.

    1. Nesprin*

      Yeah- what is management getting out of this that they think this is worthwhile?

      Is it a cargo cult management thing? i.e. close teams share if they’re struggling, so if we make our team share if they’re struggling they’ll be close?

      1. kkt*

        If everyone on one team thinks everything is going great, it’s obviously time to cut a couple of members of their staff.

  7. Anna*

    In my job we used to have to do something similar at the beginning of meetings (we selected a color to represent our feelings). Everybody started to select green (which meant all-is-okay) in order not to have to deal with any follow-up questions. It was ridiculous and uncomfortable.

    2. Antilles*

      I feel like that’s the inevitable result of any of these sorts of forced policies, that eventually people just sort of give up and give the most bland response available.
      But then again, I also feel like if you actually HAD a culture which encouraged honest open feedback and a management which truly cared about employees’ feelings, you wouldn’t need these gimmicks in the first place, so *shrug* what do I know.

      1. Personal Best in Consecutive Days Lived*

        I don’t know, that’s starting to sound like you would genuinely care about your employees in a work-appropriate way, and give them the support they need to succeed professionally and have a healthy work-life balance.

        It almost seems like you would (shudders in horror) be an effective manager.

        We can’t have that. Please distribute these emoji stickers.

    3. ferrina*

      Ugh, I hate this! My work tried this too. It’s frustrating because I really don’t need my coworkers monitoring my emotional well-being. It’s also frustrating because it’s like they don’t trust me to share the pertinent information- if it’s necessary, I’ll tell you, and if it’s not necessary, then trust me to share at my discretion.

      2. Personal Best in Consecutive Days Lived*

        Apparently Canadians use the poop emoji more than any other country.

        Anyone who has to deal with a ridiculous emoji chart at work is hereby named an honourary Canadians.

  10. Apples and Oranges*

    One manager I know or does something similar but much more work appropriate. At daily team hurdles each team member does red, yellow, green next to their name. Green=everything is good and I have extra capacity. Yellow= I’m at capacity but I have it under control and Red= I’m over capacity and might need help. If the idea is understanding how people are doing with work and getting them help or they need it, this is a much better system that doesn’t involve feelings at all!

    1. Ali + Nino*

      That sounds way better. It can actually help the team work more effectively together…imagine that!

    2. Hastily Blessed Fritos*

      That seems like a natural outgrowth from the use of that color coding for projects (green = on schedule, yellow = schedule at risk, red = behind schedule) without emotional content. I like it.

    3. WantonSeedStitch*

      I like this a lot. It’s also helpful for managers to see at a glance whether work needs to be redistributed and if so, how it could happen.

  11. Emily (not a bot)*

    We do an emoji check-in thing, but you can just pick “coffee” if you want. You can use an avocado emoji if you want. It does not matter. You do not need to disclose your feelings. And it’s fine. I think if there were just a broader range of neutral, boring stickers here, this would feel way less intrusive. It might still not be very useful, but it wouldn’t be awful.

    2. Jen*

      I have done emoji check-ins many times as icebreakers in the online workshops I teach. I figure they can just do a cat or something if they don’t want to share. I haven’t ever gotten a negative comment about it and people ARE brutally honest in our evals.

    4. Frankie Bergstein*

      I like this advice. At work, I try to project someone calm, focused, and upbeat. I’d honestly probably just pick an emoji that looks like that – a smile but not too big – and never change it. And then give this zero thought because it is silly.

  12. Goldenrod*

    My favorite thing is how the three choices are happy, angry and stressed.

    I would definitely use a happy sticker every…single…day. Because this is clearly a trap.

    1. Delta Delta*

      I think I spend roughly 90% of my work time none of those things. I’m just sort of… neutral when I’m working. But there isn’t a neutral?

    2. ThursdaysGeek*

      I’m a generally happy person who simply doesn’t get angry at work. And I would use Angry every single day, and then keep on being my normal self. If asked, I would tell them I was angry I was being treated like a toddler.

      1. AngryOctopus*

        I have my “feelings Octopus”. He’s either angry or furious. I got him as a parting gift from an old colleague.
        He’s currently on my desk at “furious” but he’s wearing a tiara, so it’s confusing.

    3. ferrina*

      I would replace the Angry sticker with a Hulk sticker.

      “He’s a friend from work”

    4. Salty Caramel*

      Management always wants to hear employees are happy. Everywhere I’ve worked, on an employee satisfaction survey, there’s a question that wants you to indicate you are “happy and energized” and “look forward to work.”

      1. Jen*

        I genuinely like my job and I don’t look forward to work, as a rule. I look forward to weekends and vacations. The real reason I work is to have money to do things I really want to do.

        1. allathian*

          Yes, me too. Sure, I get some satisfaction from knowing that my employer needs and values my skills enough to pay a decent salary for my efforts, but I definitely work to live. Employers who expect live to work personalities wouldn’t be a good fit for me.

      2. londonedit*

        Yeah, I like my job and I don’t have the Sunday night dread or anything, but if I won the lottery I’d still stop working immediately! Definitely wouldn’t say I ‘look forward to work’. Work is the necessary means by which I get to do the things I really do enjoy in the rest of my life.

  13. Having a Scrummy Week*

    I am definitely a feelings person. I feel most comfortable when I am on a team where I can share how I’m doing – especially if I am having a tough time and need some support. Similarly, I am the first to jump in if someone else needs help.

    The issue I have here is the forced participation/sharing of feelings. If you are having a tough time, you can voluntarily reach out to others for help. If management was actually using the chart to identify employees who are drowning in work and need help, it would be useful. But clearly they aren’t.

      1. Georgia Carolyn Mason*

        I was thinking of the green barf, but that’s a bit much. The eye roll would be perfect; this is already the most-used emoji on my phone.

        1. JustaTech*

          I wish that after a very senior person had texted me his opinion of a potential client as “puke emoji” I would never have to see it again at work, but my team is full of parents of toddlers and kitten fosterers, so that emoji gets used a lot in our chat to explain why someone is working from home that day.

  16. juliebulie*

    One day recently, they stalled starting a staff meeting until everyone’s stickers were placed.

    I have no problem with them delaying the meeting all day.
    The three choices are ludicrous. But I guess I would have to pick “Angry” because I’d be pretty angry about having to discuss my feelings at work.

    1. Mj03*

      honestly and granted the work place environment, I’d probably opt for or print my own emoji st8cker of …granted not playing well to office politics or any procedures or whatever but I’m typically a very helpful team player but if I have to put up a thing of my mood it will consistently be that emoji regardless ‍♀️

  17. SB*

    This sounds a lot like a Six Sigma huddle board which is used to drive tasks to completion. It’s pretty common to include the emojis along other tasks in manufacturing environments that have to operate really efficiently.

    BUT, the “feelings” aren’t actually about your PERSONAL feelings. They’re specifically about your WORK feelings. It’s an easy and quick visual aid for the huddle coordinator to ask you what tasks you need help with. So instead of asking 10 people (in a quick 15 minute huddle with other agenda items) if they have any walk-in items, you can take a look at the stickers/emojis to quickly identify who needs help and if huddle group can remove any barriers for them or take some of the tasks. It’s not a kumbaya moment. It’s get the work done moment.

    If you don’t like the “feelings”, just replace them with a color-coded scale (like a fire threat) or the pain scale faces or literally anything else. They’re actually really helpful when used appropriately.

    1. SB*

      And obviously whoever set up this huddle board is not using the tools appropriately if they aren’t helping the Op when they have signaled distress.

      Like much of SixSigma – these tools are useful when used correctly and a PITA when they aren’t.

    2. Marshmallows*

      We have a similar thing in our group and we were doing it per person (it’s a scale of how we are doing that day… meant to tell if anyone needs assistance… there are specific questions you’re supposed to ask your self to pick where you are on the scale), but it just became the “mood meter” for one specific person and that same person was using it as an excuse to be snappy with people (“well I’m red hot today” or “sorry I went red on you”), and believe me… we don’t need the scale to know what mood he’s in. We can tell the second he walks in the door. So we collectively decided to go back to it being a group “temperature” based on some specific criteria. We are hoping that will help.

      Based on my experience with this… an actual mood meter sounds awful. Even though most people will understand that it’s for work feelings not personal feelings… there’s always gonna be one that’s going to do what my colleague did with it and use it for attention or as an excuse for poor behavior. I’m against it. Haha.

  18. North Wind*

    Ugh this is so so gross. Isn’t this a nursery exercise for toddlers?

    Could they add emojis? I’d put the eye-roll emoji.

    1. WillowSunstar*

      If it’s in the morning, I’d definitely use a sleeping emoji, complete with zzz’s. Not a morning person.

  19. Joyce to the World*

    We have an enterprise wide online version of this. I thought it was anonymous. It really isn’t. If you report anything concerning it gets sent to your manager and they have to try and figure out who it is and deal with it.

    1. DramaQ*

      Yep we had one roll out that HR thinks is a super awesome idea and is supposed to be 100% anonymous. Nope turns out there is an algorithm that pulls comments based on the overall composite score so if you score high it pulls out positive stuff. Low it pulls out negative stuff. Our senior director decided it would be absolutely awesome to share these comments in an entire departmental meeting. It was not. And guess who was dumb enough to answer honestly? While they technically cannot prove it was me, they know and I have since been labeled a “negative person” and treated as such. Now they are complaining because nobody is putting feedback into the survey they are just getting numeric scores. Gee I wonder why? I would be RUNNING if they decided to enact a sticker chart because that is the last thing we need is them seeing in real time how we feel. And we’d get in trouble if we toed the line and only put the stickers under “happy” because that’s not honest feedback.

  20. Sunflower*

    Ick. Especially with the updates that stated nothing is done regarding those emotions.

    They just want to pat themselves on the back for “caring” and who cares about the fact that employees are uncomfortable with this thing.

  21. Czhorat*

    The sticker chart is perfectly appropriate if you’re in a daycare. And are a child.

    Otherwise it’s so insane I’d think about flat out refusing if I had any capital to spend on not being treated like a literal four year old.

  22. Nene Poppy*

    Having a board as described by LW, where names go next to emojis chosen by management; and where every manager, coworker, or passerby could look at the board and see how I am ‘feeling’ would make me job hunt immediately.

    Having a board where I could provide my own emjoi would get me fired immediately.

  23. Keymaster of Gozer (She/Her)*

    A past HR person once suggested that as an idea for all teams. You’ve never heard such laughter from a room of managers.

    Engineering firm and a room of IT managers. You don’t want to know how inventive surly engineers can get when it comes to stickers.

  24. La Triviata*

    I don’t understand why managers push employees to share intimate and/or traumatic things – if you want an icebreaker, do what my job did once – each was assigned a character from a book, not told who and had a label stuck on their back, then had to figure out who the character was from what others said about them. (I ended up as Pooh) No bringing up pain or trauma, nothing too intimate and people got a laugh out of it.

  25. chrispynet*

    We had this at one company I worked at but it was an anonymous web form that would be aggregated by team and shown on a org wide dashboard. They made the mistake of including an optional comment section and I would just put random Jean-Paul Satre and Albert Camus quotes in there to see if anybody actually read them. Spoilers: nobody did.

  26. Nonny*

    This makes me think of a comedy sketch I saw online years ago about a company “feelings” chart through which a character discovers they can control their coworkers’ moods.

  27. Kristin*

    Arg, why do workplaces do this? My fantastic team does a “vibe check” – restricted to our workload and if we need help or have the capacity to help others. It’s relevant to work and helpful.
    A sticker chart isn’t. Since the CEO is clueless, I would get as many colleagues together to paste it full of “happy” stickers every day, until he realizes it’s futile.

  28. stifled creativity*

    Is there a confused emoji on the sticker chart? Because I would feel really confused that reasonable, professional adults are being forced to take time out of their day to do something this ridiculous.

  30. Kevin Sours*

    Even in workplaces where keeping close track of employee’s emotional states is a necessity, the emoji chart is a large pile of used hay. You probably don’t need to do it and if you do it should be treated more seriously and kept private.

  31. Fudging Sticker Chart*

    Someday I hope we will hear of an employee who, when presented with a feelings sticker chart or that meeting where everyone says something traumatic or any sort of “talk about all your feelings right now”, sticks their sticker in the angry spot and says “I’m angry because of this fudging sticker chart.”
    I understand why people don’t do that, but on the other hand, I can just imagine the catharsis.

  33. Yes And*

    I used to work for a company that closed every week with an all-staff meeting (small company; 20 people at its largest) where we would debrief from the week. It began with dividing a whiteboard (or, during WHF, a spreadsheet) into “happy,” “meh,” and “sad” columns. We went around the room, and everybody put one thing on the board, in any column (nobody ever declined to put one thing on the board, but I’m pretty sure we would have been cool with it if it had happened). Then the floor was opened, and anybody could put as many things as they wanted on the board.

    It bears a passing resemblance to this story, but here’s the thing: IT WAS GREAT. Here’s the key differences, though:

    1. All the happy/meh/sads were assumed to be work-related. Occasionally someone put something personal or current-events on the board, but that was the voluntary exception.
    2. The happys were basically an opportunity to celebrate our achievements and those of our clients from the week.
    3. We then discussed all the mehs and sads, and every one had to have an action item attached to it. That action item was then assigned to a person with a deadline attached.

    It was basically a way, in a flat organization, to make sure problems got addressed and that there was accountability within the company. I thought it worked very well.

  34. Workfromhome*

    I would make my own sticker. “Annoyed” and put on the chart and leave it there until someone brings it up?

    Hey X why are you feeling annoyed?
    I’m annoyed at having to put my feeling up on a board every day. I’ll continue to be annoyed as long as we have to do this so its easier to just leave it there.

  35. MotherofaPickle*

    Posts like this make me very grateful for my staff at one of my previous Stressful Jobs. If someone came with a “stupid” question for me, my staff were able to take one look at me and send them away until I was in a better mood!

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