A controller descended an aircraft to 18;000 feet with opposite direction traffic at 19;000 feet. Th...

Narrative:

A supervisor from traffic management unit came over and asked myself and my radar assist position 'what's up?' he said hi and I said what's up with you. He said he was living the dream. I was a little busy giving clearances and when I got a break; I turned around and he was gone. I immediately smelled something bad. I looked at the radar assist controller and asked him if he smelled something rotten. He turned around and said he smelled something really bad! It got so bad that it distracted me from the traffic I was working. I gave a clearance to aircraft X to descend to 18;000 feet to miss opposite direction traffic at 19;000 feet. I then told aircraft X to descend to 16;000 feet with no delay. Aircraft X never heard me say no delay and was descending at only 500 feet a minute. I had a j-ring up on aircraft Y; the aircraft at 19;000 feet. Both aircraft Y and aircraft X started to flash with a conflict alert. I turned aircraft X 40 degrees to the right to miss aircraft Y. This whole situation could have been avoided if I wasn't distracted by the extremely offensive odor left by the supervisor.please don't come over and say hello to me if you are feeling sick or have to go to the bathroom.

Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: A Controller descended an aircraft to 18;000 feet with opposite direction traffic at 19;000 feet. The descending aircraft did not descend at the expected rate so the Controller vectored the aircraft off course to ensure separation.

Narrative: A supervisor from Traffic Management Unit came over and asked myself and my radar assist position 'What's up?' He said hi and I said what's up with you. He said he was living the dream. I was a little busy giving clearances and when I got a break; I turned around and he was gone. I immediately smelled something bad. I looked at the radar assist controller and asked him if he smelled something rotten. He turned around and said he smelled something really bad! It got so bad that it distracted me from the traffic I was working. I gave a clearance to aircraft X to descend to 18;000 feet to miss opposite direction traffic at 19;000 feet. I then told aircraft X to descend to 16;000 feet with no delay. Aircraft X never heard me say no delay and was descending at only 500 feet a minute. I had a J-Ring up on aircraft Y; the aircraft at 19;000 feet. Both aircraft Y and aircraft X started to flash with a conflict alert. I turned aircraft X 40 degrees to the right to miss aircraft Y. This whole situation could have been avoided if I wasn't distracted by the extremely offensive odor left by the supervisor.Please don't come over and say hello to me if you are feeling sick or have to go to the bathroom.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.

Attributes
ACN	1317443
Time
Date	201512
Local Time Of Day	1801-2400
Place
Locale Reference	ZZZ.ARTCC
State Reference	US
Aircraft 1
Make Model Name	Medium Transport
Operating Under FAR Part	Part 121
Flight Phase	Descent
Route In Use	Direct
Flight Plan	IFR
Aircraft 2
Make Model Name	Medium Transport
Flight Phase	Cruise
Route In Use	Direct
Flight Plan	IFR
Person 1
Function	Enroute
Qualification	Air Traffic Control Fully Certified
Experience	Air Traffic Control Time Certified In Pos 1 (yrs) 10.0
Events
Anomaly	ATC Issue All Types Conflict Airborne Conflict Deviation - Procedural Published Material / Policy Deviation - Procedural Clearance

A controller descended an aircraft to 18;000 feet with opposite direction traffic at 19;000 feet. The descending aircraft did not descend at the expected rate so the controller vectored the aircraft off course to ensure separation.