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The story goes: The huge printing presses of a major Chicago newspaper began malfunctioning on the Saturday before Christmas, putting all the revenue for adver
by cooldeal 15y ago
The story goes:
The huge printing presses of a major Chicago newspaper began malfunctioning on the Saturday before Christmas, putting all the revenue for advertising that was to appear in the Sunday paper in jeopardy. None of the technicians could track down the problem. Finally, a frantic call was made to the retired printer who had worked with these presses for over 40 years. “We’ll pay anything; just come in and fix them,” he was told.
When he arrived, he walked around for a few minutes, surveying the presses; then he approached one of the control panels and opened it. He removed a dime from his pocket, turned a screw 1/4 of a turn, and said, “The presses will now work correctly.” After being profusely thanked, he was told to submit a bill for his work.
The bill arrived a few days later, for $10,000.00! Not wanting to pay such a huge amount for so little work, the printer was told to please itemize his charges, with the hope that he would reduce the amount once he had to identify his services. The revised bill arrived: $1.00 for turning the screw; $9,999.00 for knowing which screw to turn.
- zach 15y agoMore versions of the story and many others: http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/where.asp http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/where.asp
- GFischer 15y agoI like that story, but I also usually think of some extra lessons (for the printing-press owners): - Operations-critical knowledge should be documented - mitigate the "bus factor" (http://www.ask.com/wiki/Bus_factor http://www.ask.com/wiki/Bus_factor) - There are often-neglected big support advantages of buying from large suppliers with good support. (ok, big corporations do take that into account, but for small startups, making sure that the buyer feels at ease not having such a case blow up in their faces is important, and same for buying mission-critical software, though having a disruptive/competitive-advantage generating app might be worth the risk)