For want of a nail...

[pluckyduck]

... a kingdom was lost.

What a day. Many issues (like you all have) but what struck me as almost knee slappingly funny was how all of the Grand Issues came from just the tiniest, smallest twist.

Best example:

High volume product this time of year, through a supplier who can be easily thrown if all of the ducks (cough) aren't in a row.

The purchase order template for this product is set up with these lines:

PRODUCT COLOR:
BACKGROUND COLOR:
IMPRINT COLOR:

Our rep then fills in the lines. This is important, because we don't usually have to specify background color on most products.

Apparently, sometime in the last two weeks, somebody accidently deleted the BACKGROUND COLOR: line on the template. The last two days, there have been close to 20 customer orders come to a screeching halt at the factory. Of course, they call us about them one by one, so it took five, six, seven before I even heard about it and then 10, 11, 12 before we figured out what the heck went wrong. Event dates being missed, my calls up the food chain at the factory to get them to get our orders back on track without telling us it took them an extra three days of production to make one call.

And just as I boiling over mad in frustration, a little voice says to me "For want of a nail, the kingdom was lost." and I start laughing thinking Oh, NOW, I understand what that means!"



Do you have a detail business? Are you stocked up with nails?

Andrea
going to Home Depot, ASAP

[theworm[$]]

At least you've kept your sense of humor!
Hang in there, Quaker!

[pluckyduck]

theworm said

At least you've kept your sense of humor!
Hang in there, Quaker!

I don't think I have laughed more at work, belly laughed, than in the last couple of months. I can be a real witch, in the "b" sense of the word, and a total control freak. Known for my temper if you promise one thing and deliver another.

The universe has thrown me so many curves the last few months, it's either develop an ulcer and high blood pressure, or start laughing about it. One of my major suppliers has 17 products featured in my latest catalog. 14 of them are out of stock and not expected to be in for two months. (His inventory guy forgot to order a bunch of stuff -- there's that nail again.)

Crazy spring. I laugh when we've done everything we possibly can and things still go way awry. I've been laughing a lot.

Surely I'm not the only one. What do you do when you do everything you possibly can and the wheels still fall off the bus?


Andrea

[brian_igo]

You've tapped into my all-time biggest pet peeve.

I don't have a problem when something goes wrong that is out of our control. Part breaks, run out of components, truck gets held up because of weather, I'm fine. The worse the problem is, the easier it is for me to keep myself and everyone else loose.

But if the source of a problem is one of our people...umm, the expression I usually use isn't suitable here...I want to get very angry. Self-inflicted, stupid mistakes drive me nuts. As you describe your situation, Andrea, I don't know if I'd be more pissed at the idjit who deleted the line for background color on the computer, or the sales reps who didn't catch the glitch. But bet your ass I would use this as a big object lesson in paying attention to details.




Brian
(...passing the Pepto to the Duck.)

[taurusmoon]

pluckyduck said

What do you do when you do everything you possibly can and the wheels still fall off the bus?


Andrea

Take a cab.

[taurusmoon]

:

You jinxed me.

I was just called into a colleague's office to look at a prototype of a counter display for a new book we're publishing. Two titles in the same series are being stacked into a two tier display.

Well, the display manufacturer screwed up the size of the header card. It's much smaller than the dimensions they gave me when I designed the graphics for it. Not a huge problem. It can be fixed with limited effort on their part and none on mine.

But, and this is a big but...

Somewhere in the production cycle the editorial department decided to change the cover design of the book; moving the title from the top to the center of the cover and other key design elements from where they were expected to be.

Well, now you can't see what the title of the book in the back is. It falls behind the book on the bottom tier.

This problem is fixable too, but it leaves us with a display that's much taller than the ideal. And, being that the manufacturer has to go back to the drawing board means that the display will now follow the launch of the product by at least a month.

Now wouldn't it have been nice if somebody said, "Hey look! We have a new cover design. Wanna see it?"

[pluckyduck]

Gasp. I did jink you!

I laugh, ha ha!, a the young naive moi, who thought that all of the things were controllable if there were just better systems. Honestly, there's a point where disaster recovery is more time efficient than trying to make everything line up perfectly before hand.

I need a big glass of red wine.

Why, look, there it is! Right in front of me! (I go home early on Fridays now. )

Andrea