The overnight reprint

At a small print shop in Alexandria, the owner's son has a reputation for saving the day.

When a wedding card comes back with the wrong date, he stays until two in the morning and reprints the whole run. When a school's certificates are cut a few millimetres short, he redoes them before the gates open. Customers love him. His father tells the stories proudly.

Every one of those nights is a small act of devotion. Every one of them also hides the same problem. Nobody checks the proof against the customer's message before the press starts. The mistake begins at the counter, in the first five minutes, and is caught at the end, when it is most expensive to fix.

Because he keeps catching it, nobody has a reason to change the counter. The rescue is so reliable that the fault has become invisible. The applause goes to the person who cleans up, and none goes to the duller question of why there is so much to clean.

The harder, braver move is to let one job fail in plain view. Not out of carelessness, and not to punish anyone, but so everyone can see where it actually went wrong. A customer gets a call explaining a delay. The family sits down and agrees that every proof gets read aloud before printing. It feels worse that week.

It is far better the next year. Fewer late nights, fewer anxious customers, a son who sleeps.

Most families and most small shops reward the save. It is worth noticing that the more often a save is needed, the less it is a sign of talent and the more it is a sign that something earlier is broken.