# Counter staff to ask for an address once, or close early

> A new Slop University impact report from the School of Continuous Improvement describes a small counter-top unit fitted to shire service counters, and the rule by which the University's own counters will answer a second request for an address with shorter published hours.

The School of Continuous Improvement has spent five years at the service
counters of a regional shire, and its Impact Report 2021–2026, published today,
sets out what a small desk-mounted unit found there. The University's own
enrolment, library and permit counters will now be fitted with the unit and held
to the rule it made possible.

> A counter has a great deal to say once someone thinks to count what it is
> already doing.
>
> --- Dr Renke Sabel, Senior Lecturer and Convenor, Indicator Commons

The report, written by Edda Nwafor with Dr Sabel and Dr Ingeborg Nwachukwu,
follows the Telling Counter from its first fitting to 71 counters across
collaborating councils and agencies. It describes a Telling Card on which each
resident writes an address once, a button staff press before asking for any
part of it, and a rule by which a second request shortens the counter's
published hours. Three short case studies take the work from the counting, to
the rule, to what staff did once they knew what was being counted.

At the University's counters, an address asked for twice will cost that counter
an hour of its published week, restored only after a review at which the card is
present. The same step will apply to any part of an address asked for on its
own. Ms Nwafor, Doctoral Candidate in the School, said the people at the
counters "taught us more about the question than we had thought to ask them."

The report reflects the School's long-standing interest in the small repeated
exchanges that institutions rely on without recording, and the University is
pleased to see five years of them set down in one place.

The full report is available from the University's research repository under an
open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.7y14ax.