October 29, 2004

Supply & demand

Wednesday was a day when supply was short of the demand for our newspaper. That's because of an error at the printing plant. By bundling our papers in stacks of 30 instead of 40, the production people shorted us over 1,000 papers. Instead of counting the papers, they counted the finished bundles to determine when everything was done. So a day of hectic math and phone calls ensued. Our street sales ended abruptly when the sales people ran out of papers.

In the end, people at the plant actually went to the dumpster and dug around to come up with almost 700 papers. Most of them lacked the advertising inserts. The production people brought the papers halfway to us and our delivery men took them to the shorted vendors. In the end, it will be an accounting nightmare (which I will have nothing to do with).

One of the people involved in the mistake actually drove 45 minutes to our office on Thursday to apologize. His gesture was well-received. Why can't more people be like that?

Posted by JRC at October 29, 2004 03:20 PM | TrackBack