Fable
Material costs and quotation sheet
The translation house bought paper from the paper merchant by the character, but charged customers by the whole letter. The house manager oversaw two seemingly similar matters: one was how much capital each character and each sheet of paper consumed, and the other was how a job was ultimately priced to the customer. The new clerk found it troublesome and merged the two ledgers into one, thinking both were related to success or failure anyway.
At first no one objected. The new accountant mixed the two ledgers together, thinking that if paper was expensive, every letter should cost more; when the manager saw fewer pages, he even praised them for saving effort. But when peak season arrived, the old accounts suddenly could not be explained clearly: was it that the previous stall had not finished, or that the latter stall had not held the line? No one could answer.
They first added more seals and slogans and required everyone to write in more detail. As a result, the booklet grew thicker and disputes increased. When something went wrong, everyone could find a sentence to excuse themselves, but no one knew which end to save first.
The old steward called everyone into the courtyard and had them retrace the actual course of events. Whatever concerned the immediate action went into the first book; whatever concerned subsequent responsibility went into the second. The two books referenced each other, but were no longer mixed onto the same page.
Short urgent letters were very profitable, while long idle letters lost money; some customers were willing to pay more for punctuality, while others cared only about cheapness. After separating them, many old conclusions changed: some jobs looked busy but actually did not block trouble; some arrangements seemed unremarkable in ordinary times but preserved the whole in a disaster.
To prevent newcomers from mixing things up again, the old steward had them each handle a small case. Only when the two ledgers could each answer their own questions and also connect with each other at the boundary would the small case pass. If someone still wrote the two matters on one page, they had to return to the scene and look again at who acted first and who was ultimately responsible; when it was unclear, it was better to ask once more than let a muddled account stay overnight; because on the day something truly went wrong, one missing line of distinction would make an extra team work in vain.
The owner looked at them separately: the internal account counted paper, lamp oil and proofreading, while the external account priced by urgency, risk and outcome. Later, when newcomers entered the trade, the old steward had them remember only one line: cost tells you the floor, but price also depends on what the customer is buying.