Before we get started, I want to remind you about something new I’m doing here on the podcast.  Every Monday, I release an additional short episode called Smarter in 5 Minutes.

And it’s exactly what it sounds like—five minutes, one focused idea, and something practical you can think about right away.

No long explanations.  No extra steps.  No homework. Just a quick reset for your brain before the week really gets going.

These episodes are for those moments when you know something feels off—maybe you’re already feeling behind, distracted, or mentally scattered—and you don’t have time to figure out why.

Smarter in 5 Minutes is designed to meet you right there.

If you haven’t listened yet, make sure you check them out wherever you listen to podcasts like on Spotify, Apple Music or now on YouTube or subscribe on those platforms so it shows up in your feed every Monday morning.

Think of it as a small but powerful way to start your week a little smarter—and a little lighter.

Alright, let’s get into today’s episode…..

Have you ever noticed how the same frustrating behaviors show up again and again at work? The boss who thinks everything is urgent, the coworker who tells long stories in every meeting, or the person who somehow takes credit for things they didn’t even do. It can feel like you’re stuck in a loop that you didn’t ask to be in.

You walk in hoping for a good day, and then a tiny thing happens that sends your brain into a tailspin. One comment, one email, one eye roll, and suddenly you can feel your body tense up.

It’s like your brain says, “Here we go again.” And even though you tell yourself you won’t let it get to you, it still does.

Years ago, I came across something from inspirational teacher, Martha Beck, called Dysfunctional Family Bingo. She came up with this clever and fun idea that helps you take the sting out of irritating family moments. 

The basic premise is that you make a Bingo sheet filled with all those predictable behaviors that drive you crazy. Then, instead of getting upset when they happen, you get to mark them off, with the goal of getting Bingo. 

I used this idea during a holiday gathering once, and I’ll share the full story later. But let’s just say it turned a normally stressful event into the best Christmas ever.

The great thing is—you can apply the same idea at work. Because work is full of the exact same patterns. 

Things happen the same way, over and over again. It’s almost like there’s a script that everyone else can see but you. And when people stick to that script, your brain reacts fast.

Basically, that’s your Toddler Brain jumping in. It’s the part of your brain that wants everyone to behave. It wants fairness. It wants order. It wants people to do the right thing. 

And when they don’t, it throws its hands in the air and gets upset. It says, “Why do they always do this?” or “I can’t deal with this today.”

Your Toddler Brain means well, but it reacts without thinking. It gets overwhelmed fast. 

It makes work feel heavier than it needs to feel. And honestly, it’s exhausting trying to manage a job and everyone else’s behavior at the same time.

But there’s another part of your brain—a calmer, wiser part—that can take over instead, the Supervising Parent. That part can look at all these repeat behaviors and think, “Oh, there it is again.” No surprise. No drama. Just awareness.

When you let that calmer part take the lead, work feels lighter. You spend less time reacting and more time breathing. You start to laugh at the patterns instead of being bothered by them.

And that’s where this idea of Dysfunctional Work/Office Bingo comes in. A simple little shift that can help you take your power back and make your day feel so much easier. Not by changing the people around you, but by changing how you see what they do.

Why Work Can Feel So Frustrating

Workplace dysfunction shows up in the same ways again and again. You notice the same behavior from the same people, and after a while, it becomes completely predictable. Yet each time it happens, it still finds a way to get under your skin and throw off your mood.

Most people respond with stress, irritation, or by trying to avoid the people who set them off. We complain about them, we replay the moment in our heads, or we let it ruin time we should be enjoying. It can almost feel like these people are taking up space in our brain that should be used for something better.

The real issue isn’t the behavior itself. The real issue is that we still expect something different.

In other words, we assume people will suddenly act nicer or kinder or more thoughtful. Then we feel shocked or disappointed when they… don’t. We take it all very personally, even when the behavior has nothing to do with us.

When we let someone else’s behavior decide how we feel, we hand over our energy. We get emotionally tired faster, and our brain has less power left for what really matters. It’s not the tasks draining us — it’s the emotions around the tasks.

But what if you didn’t get caught in that reaction loop? What if you could notice the behavior without the extra stress? That small shift can change how you feel.

Now let’s talk about how these repeated behaviors affect not just you, but the entire team around you.

How Workplace Dysfunction Hurts Your Workday

When dysfunction becomes normal in the workplace, everyone feels the impact. People stop questioning whether things could be calmer or better. They spend more time dealing with behavior problems than doing the work that matters most.

Instead of staying focused, so much time is lost reacting to others. One person’s tone or habits can slow everything down. Even a small interruption can force your brain to work harder to get back on track, which drains your energy long before the day is over.

The stress builds because you keep hoping something will change. You wonder if maybe today will be different. But then the same patterns show up again, and your brain says, “Seriously? This again?” That constant surprise and irritation wears you out.

It becomes a heavy way to work. You’re always bracing yourself, waiting for the next thing that will test your patience. And the worst part is feeling like you can’t do anything about it.

But you can take some of that power back. When you notice the pattern and stop letting it surprise you, you feel more in control. Even if the dysfunction stays the same, your experience doesn’t have to.

Now let’s talk about how seeing these behaviors as part of a “game” can help you stay calmer and more focused.

Common Office Behaviors That Belong on the Bingo Card

Here’s where things get interesting. If the same behaviors keep showing up at work, you can call them what they truly are: patterns you can expect. And when you expect something, you take away the surprise. When you take away the surprise, you take away a lot of the stress.

So instead of wishing these behaviors would stop, you can start naming them. That’s where the Bingo idea comes in. When you spot a behavior that always shows up, you can mentally or physically mark a square. You’re not annoyed — you’re just noticing.

Start by thinking about the characters you work with every day. You might already be picturing them as you read this. For example, maybe you have:

• The Martyr – always talking about how late they worked and how much they suffer
  
• The Drama Starter – loves gossip and stirs up problems where there aren’t any
  
• The Credit Taker – says “I did that” even when they barely helped
  
• The Meeting Hog – talks the longest, even when they have the least to say
  
• The Fire Drill Boss – everything is an emergency, all the time
  
• The Ghost – they’re on every project but nowhere to be found when needed
  
• The Over-Emailer – hits “reply all” for no reason and sends way too many messages
  
• The Perfectionist – slows everyone down because nothing is ever good enough
  
• The Hero – swoops in to save the day, often after creating the problem
  

If you’re thinking, “Oh yes, I know exactly who that is,” then congratulations — you’ve already started building your Bingo card. You’re spotting the behaviors without letting them get under your skin.

And if you want to make this even more fun, grab someone at work you really trust and play together.  It could be a coworker, a teammate, or even a work friend you text during the day.

You each create your own card and see who gets Bingo first.  Suddenly, the same behavior that used to frustrate you becomes a tiny win.

It’s your private inside joke, while everyone else around you is taking things way too seriously.

When you see these patterns as predictable squares on a board, they lose some of their power. You stop feeling surprised and start feeling amused.

Now that we’ve identified some of the common squares, let’s look at why turning dysfunction into a “game” can make such a huge difference for your stress and sanity at work.

How Your Brain Helps You Handle Work Drama

Your brain loves patterns. It feels safer when it knows what to expect. So when you begin to notice that the same behaviors repeat at work, something powerful happens. You stop taking those moments as personal attacks, and you start seeing them as predictable.

Instead of thinking, “Why is this happening to me?” you shift to, “Oh, there it is again.” That shift gives your brain a moment to pause before reacting. It helps your body relax instead of jumping into stress mode right away.

This is when you move from your Toddler Brain to your Supervising Parent Brain. Your Toddler Brain reacts fast. It gets frustrated or hurt and wants everyone to behave better. But your Supervising Parent Brain is calmer and wiser. It notices what’s happening and stays steady.

When you look at the dysfunction like it’s a square on a Bingo card, your brain sees it as a simple pattern. The best part is that humor interrupts the stress cycle. You smile instead of feeling angry. You mentally or physically check a box instead of letting the moment control your whole day.

Here’s the thing – nothing about the office has changed, but suddenly everything feels easier. Your energy stays with you instead of being drained away. You stay focused on what matters most. You’re not stuck in the drama — you’re in charge of how you respond.

And now that you understand the brain shift that makes this work so well, let’s bring it to life with a real example of how this simple change can help someone feel better at work right away.

Becoming a Smarter Accountant: When One Client Finally Saw The Pattern

I once worked with a client who had a coworker that drove her up the wall. This person loved to stir things up. Every tiny issue became a big dramatic story that everyone had to hear about.

My client found herself getting wrapped up in the drama without meaning to. She’d leave work exhausted, even when she didn’t have a heavy workload. It wasn’t the job wearing her out — it was the person.

Once we talked about predictable behavior and the idea of seeing patterns, something clicked for her. She said, “Oh wow… this is just what she does. It’s almost like she can’t help it.”

From that moment on, whenever the drama started up again, she didn’t get pulled in. She didn’t feed the story. She didn’t keep hoping it would be different. She mentally checked the “Drama Starter” box and moved on with her day.

She told me she felt calmer and more focused. She had more energy left at the end of the day. And the best part was that her coworker didn’t change at all — but her experience did.

That’s the power of noticing the pattern instead of reacting to the person. And it works no matter who you’re dealing with.

Now let’s bring it all together before I share a personal story that inspired this whole idea.

Key Takeaway and Action Item

Workplace dysfunction isn’t going anywhere. People are going to keep being who they are. Patterns will keep repeating. But you don’t have to let those patterns take over your day or your mood.

When you notice the behavior without letting your Toddler Brain jump in, everything feels lighter. Turning it into a little game you play with yourself makes it less personal and a lot less stressful. You stop being pulled into the drama and start feeling more grounded and calm.

Here’s one simple question to ask yourself the next time something frustrating happens at work:

“Is this a square on my Bingo card?”

This question matters because it gives your brain a pause. It helps you shift from reacting to observing. Instead of being upset, you can recognize the familiar pattern and mentally check it off. That pause gives you power.

Asking yourself this question takes the weight off the moment and keeps your energy focused where it belongs. It’s a small change with a big impact on how you feel during your workday.

And now that you understand how this works, I want to share a personal story that inspired me to bring this idea into the workplace.

Pulling Back the Curtain

Pulling back the curtain…

As I said before, Martha Beck is the one who came up with the idea of Dysfunctional Family Bingo, and it really inspired me to try it myself years ago. I was tired of leaving my in-law family gatherings feeling tense and upset, so I figured, why not try something different? If nothing else, I thought it might make me laugh.

So my ex-husband and I sat down and made our own Bingo sheets. We wrote out all the usual behaviors that we could count on seeing every single year. The comments, the habits, the eye rolls, the same old stories — all the things that normally drove us crazy.

Then came the fun part. Every time one of those behaviors happened, instead of getting annoyed, we looked at each other and secretly marked it off our sheet. 

It was like we had a secret game no one else knew about. We weren’t mad. We weren’t tense. We were actually waiting for the next thing to happen.

We went into that gathering bracing for irritation. But we left laughing. We were amused. We were lighter. It completely shifted the energy of the day. And honestly, it turned into the best Christmas we ever had with his family.

The thing is, nothing about the family changed. They were exactly who they always were. The only thing that changed was how we saw it.

And that’s the whole point of this. You can’t always change what other people do at work. You can’t control the dramas, the habits, or the personalities that show up. But you can change whether you let those patterns run your day.

You get to decide if you’re going to get stressed and drained — or if you’re going to smile, take a deep breath, and think or whisper, “Bingo.”

If you’re ready to handle the dysfunction better at work, take The Smarter Accountant Quiz at www.thesmarteraccountant.com and schedule a free 30-minute call at www.thesmarteraccountant.com/calendar.

And if this episode helped you, please send it to another accountant who could use it too.  You could even play together like my ex-husband and I did.  You never know how you might be helping another accountant deal with the dysfunction in the office.

As as I end each episode, the truth is that you’re already smart.  But this podcast, I promise, will show you how to be smarter.