Improvisation: The Most Underrated Professional Skill

Sitting across from my mentor, we huddled over a coffee table to gameplan my first-ever client meet-up. He’d kindly bought me a takeaway latte, which I had blindly trusted to be securely lidded.

Spoiler: it wasn’t.

I went to take a sip, and the lid popped open. Just like that, it became a 1 v 1: coffee versus my crisp white shirt. The shirt lost. The mass expansion was happening in real-time, and this brown stain claimed more real estate with every passing second.

From the moment I put on that suit, I was focused on being as presentable as possible. The one variable I hadn’t accounted for? A coffee stain.

Well, it had happened—and I had to do something about it.

I rushed to the bathroom for damage control. Now was not the time to cry over a spilt latte. (Is that even how the phrase goes?) I scanned my options: water, liquid hand soap, and a motion-sensor hand dryer. Looking down, the coffee had claimed the bottom-left corner of my shirt as prime real estate for disaster.

I unbuttoned just enough to start a frantic hand-washing session. To my surprise, whatever soap they stocked in that public bathroom had serious stain-removing properties. The brown was actually coming out.

I wrung out my now mostly clean shirt and moved on to phase two: drying. Good thing we had arrived early. This impromptu MacGyver episode was turning into a full-length feature.

I stood under the dryer, doing a delicate dance to keep it running, shifting every few seconds to activate the sensor. When the shirt was finally just lightly damp, it was good enough.

With minutes to spare, I re-emerged, shirt crisp, stain gone, confidence mostly intact. No one was the wiser—except me, my mentor, and maybe a few amused bathroom visitors who had witnessed my wardrobe rescue mission.