Fable
The Trial Workshop of Twenty-Four Gates
There was a trial workshop in the north of the city, and all new craftsmen had to pass through it. At the earliest time, the shopkeeper only had them repair a chair; whoever repaired it quickly and made it look pleasing could enter the shop and take on work.
The shop later took orders from the government, pharmacies, shipping fleets and schools. Someone who repairs chairs well may not be able to balance ledgers; someone who can balance ledgers may misjudge damp wood. The old approach began treating people who could demo as people who could deliver.
The shopkeeper first lengthened the test, requiring each person to do ten things in one go. It looked stricter, but the craftsmen quickly learned to do the most visible work first and hide the hard-to-check gaps on the back. Acceptance was lively, but after delivery there was more rework.
Someone suggested again inviting the most experienced master to stand at the door and score. The master had good judgment, but his mood, fatigue and focus differed every day. Two batches of craftsmen made the same thing, yet the scores differed greatly.
Later the accounting office turned the trial workshop into twenty-four gates: fast work, slow work, bad materials, rush orders, missing tools, false alarms and night inspections. Each gate had fixed records, and where mistakes were made, how long it took, and whether help was sought were all written in the red-ink ledger.
New craftsmen no longer had their fate decided by a single sample. Old craftsmen who switched tools also had to pass the same set of gates again. For the first time the shopkeeper could see: some people were fast but prone to missing safety nails, some were slow but steady, and some new saws only worked well on dry wood.
The most important change happened before release. As long as a key gate in the red-ink ledger had not passed, the shop would not take the corresponding order. No one could override the record with “I think it's fine this time.”
Years later, people in the city said that trial workshop had delayed a lot of excitement, but it had saved more deliveries. It did not turn every craftsman into a genius; it only forced every change to face the same set of real problems. Later the shopkeeper discovered that the twenty-four gates themselves also needed maintenance. When new materials appeared in the city, the trial ground added new checkpoints; when old orders no longer mattered, the corresponding checkpoints were given lower weight. Otherwise craftsmen would spend their energy on outdated questions, and the trial workshop would also deceive people. The bookkeeper checked the red-ink ledger every month to confirm it still matched the work the shop truly had to deliver. Later, when a new shopkeeper took over, he wanted to skip the trial workshop based on a single interview. The bookkeeper handed him the rework ledger: without the same set of gates, no one could say whether things had gotten better or worse.