Things I Learned From the Worst Boothmate I Ever Had

I have a lot of opinions about booth etiquette. Most of them I developed the hard way, never from a textbook or school, but from sitting in a very small glass box with someone who seemed determined to make the assignment as difficult as humanly possible.

I'm not here to tell you who did what. I'm here to tell you what I learned. Consider this your field guide to booth survival, courtesy of an experience I did not ask for.

Lesson 1: Agree on rotation before you start. In writing. With witnesses.

I'm joking. Mostly.

But seriously, I feel like rotation is the number one source of booth conflict, and it doesn't have to be. Before the session starts, your team should agree on who goes first, how long each shift is, and what happens to a shift when there's a break. (My answer to that last one: breaks don't count. If you're mid-shift when the session pauses, you resume your shift after. Everyone gets a real break. This is not controversial. And yet here we are...)

Five minutes of conversation before the event saves hours of tension during it. This is not a negotiation that should drag on. Come in with flexibility, agree on something that works for everyone, and move on. The event won't wait for you to settle a rotation dispute.

And here's something nobody says out loud: if you're the one proposing the rotation method, be prepared for your suggestion to be accepted or refused. A suggestion is not a decree. If your teammates don't agree, that's not an attack on you; it's just a no. You go back to the table and figure it out together.

Which brings me to something that should be obvious but apparently isn't: in a team of three or more, majority rules. That's it. That's the rule. If two people out of three agree on how to handle rotation, the method is decided. You don't get to override a majority because you feel strongly about it. Democracy works in the booth too.

Lesson 2: Peers are peers. Not managers, not subordinates, peers.

Unless someone has been formally designated as team lead by the client or the agency, in writing, everyone in that booth holds equal standing. That means no one gets to issue directives. No one gets to override the group's agreed method unilaterally. No one gets to pull rank that was never granted to them.

The booth is not a hierarchy. It's a collaboration. Act accordingly.

Lesson 3: You do not touch your colleague's mic

I feel like this one should not need to be said. And yet here we are. Again.

When it is your colleague's turn on the mic, their microphone is their instrument. You do not mute it, adjust it, or interfere with it for any reason they have not asked you for. This is not a gray area. This is not open to interpretation (no pun intended). It is a basic, non-negotiable rule of booth conduct.

If you have a concern, you pass a note. You wait for the handover. You act like a professional.

Lesson 4: When things go sideways, you stay

Assignments get complicated. Disagreements happen. Rotations go off-script. Speakers go 40% too fast, and your brain starts filing a formal complaint.

None of that is a reason to leave.

Walking off an active assignment doesn't just affect you — it affects your teammates, who now have to cover your shifts on top of their own, and it affects the client, who hired a full team and is now getting less than that. It is, to put it plainly, a breach of professional responsibility.

Good interpreters stay. They communicate. They work through it. That's what the job requires.

Lesson 5: The booth is small. Your reputation is not.

Here's the thing about the interpreting world: it's not that big. People talk. Clients remember. Colleagues remember more.

How you behave in the booth, under pressure, in a dispute, when you're tired, and the session has run over by 45 minutes says a great deal about who you are as a professional. More than your CV. More than your rates. More than anything you put in a pitch email.

Be the boothmate you'd want to work with. It's really that simple.

Every difficult assignment teaches you something. This one taught me a lot.

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I'm a conference interpreter and content creator based in Ottawa, and the founder of Words à Words. Find me on Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn.

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