Fable
The seal is placed only at three forks
The North Granary installed a bronze scale that could sort orders. As soon as an ordinary grain sack was weighed, the scale could determine which warehouse it should go to and which street it should be sent to. In early years it saved a lot of manpower. When the famine year came, the orders became complicated. Relief grain, credit grain, military grain, and quotas for the elderly and orphans all mixed together. The bronze scale was still fast, but it began judging several borderline orders as too heavy or too light.
The granary chief first had the bookkeepers review every slip one by one. Grain carts lined up outside the city gate, and ordinary slips slowed down too. Everyone complained: if every step needs a person to check it, why install the bronze scale in the first place?
He then let the bronze scale handle everything. The next day, a widow's relief grain was withheld as ordinary credit grain, and the neighbors made a scene at the granary door. There were not many wrong orders, but when they fall on vital points they hurt people.
The old accountant watched for several days and placed three red seals beside the copper scale: quantity over the limit, evidence in conflict, and matters involving relief and special status. Only for these slips did the copper scale have to stop and hand the reasons, grain coupons and recommendations to a person.
Ordinary orders continue to flow on their own; red-seal orders are confirmed, rerouted or taken over by the warehouse manager. People were not stuffed back into every grain of rice, nor driven out of the granary; when the red seal appears, people stand at the fork most likely to cause harm.
The warehouse chief later drew the red lines more finely: only abnormal amounts, special identities, conflicting evidence, and consequences hard to recover were sent to the human desk. The warehouse clerks no longer redid ordinary work for the bronze scale; they only reviewed reasons, changed judgments, and left signatures at key forks.
At first the warehouse workers also interfered randomly, changing the bronze scale's conclusions whenever they differed from their own habits. The warehouse chief ruled that human takeover must state the evidence and consequences, not just rely on feeling. In this way, people were no longer shadows slowing down the whole warehouse, but responsible parties on a small number of high-risk documents. Later, the long lines at the granary gate grew shorter, and so did wrongful cases. The bronze scale continued handling large numbers of ordinary documents, while warehouse workers guarded the junctions where harm could occur; speed and responsibility did not swallow each other, but each took its proper place.
A month later, the granary was both fast and stable. The warehouse chief understood that what really needed to be designed was which kind of risk, when it appeared, must make the bronze scale stop and hand things over to a human.