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Once upon a time, in a little dye house in China, a wise man saw something that could be improved.
He noticed that people were writing on the wall to work out how much fabric weighed. The wise man thought, there must be a better way of doing this. He then thought a whiteboard would be ideal for the workers to do their sums on it. But after a few seconds he realised that the workers normally use permanent markers to write on the fabric and if a white board where put up it would end up just as messy as the wall.
He thought about it and after a while he came upon the idea of a blackboard.  The workers could write with chalk and then clean it off. So he asked the purchasing man to buy a blackboard for the workers.
Later he walked by and saw that the blackboard was up and he thought that it was good. A few hours later he strolled by and noticed that they were using it, but to his astonishment, they were using black permanent markers on the black board!! He had assumed that if people saw a black board they would use chalk, but unfortunately he assumed too much.
So the wise man went to the store and got them some chalk. Everybody was happy.
After another while he saw the workers writing with the chalk, but they complained that they did not have an eraser for the black board. They looked at him with great concern as if their world had come to a halt because they could not use a duster. Mind you the factory deals with over a million kilograms of fabric and it occurred to no one to cut a small rag and use it as a duster! Not to be let down, the wise man found a duster and gave it to them.
Then another problem arose, they did not want to loose the duster, so yet again the wise man suggested a solution for them, ( put a screw with a loop and tie a string to it!) they were once again happy.
That is the story so far; the wise man dares not go down and see what other mishap they may have come across now.
Hope you enjoyed the tale of a typical day at my work!!
Cheers,
Manuel
Update: One year later. The blackboard was taken down and put aside, and people started writing on the wall again. To remedy this issue, the blackboard was nailed to the wall. People still write on with permanent markers, as shown in the image above!
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