Santa's Toy Factory

Once upon a time, there's an young bright elf name Hugo who works in Santa's toy factory. He has been working there for eight months and he likes his work. Hugo's job is to put the assembled toys into boxes, and lift the boxes into the factory's gigantic inventory room. This way, on the night of Christmas Eve, Hugo and his elves team can just move the boxes from the piling room into Santa's sleigh. Considering there are 1.9 billion children in the world, Hugo has to ensure that he does it fast and accurate, so this way he can meet his quota while not sacrificing quality of the work. After all, we don't want a disappointed children not getting their toys right.

One day while working, Hugo found that the quality of the toys were not up to standard. One of the dolls is missing one of the eyes. One of the mini trains has not being painted yet, looks all metallic. One of the children's oven does not have a functioning light bulb. One of the toy car has only three wheels. And he realized that at least there were twenty toys that are missing at least something important.

Hugo understood that these imperfections must be happening from the other department that is sending him the toys for the final assembly, so he went next door and meet the elf responsible for making the toys. He saw elf George is assembling a teddy bear. George has been working in Santa's toy factory for the last 20 years of his life, so he's definitely not a newcomer.

"Hi, George!"

"Hello young Hugo."

"Can I ask you a question?"

"Sure." George still attaching the teddy bear's leg to its body.

"I've noticed that there are about twenty toys that are not finished, but they are in the last batch that got send to my table to put into boxes. Could you repair them before we move these to Santa's sleigh?" Hugo put down a box full of the twenty malfunctioning toys.

George just shrugged his shoulder and said,"Well, we don't have enough material to cover all that, so they just need to make do. I haven't receive new shipment yet from the supplier department. And I have a quota to finish if we want to ensure 1.9 billion children get their toys."

Hugo wrinkles his nose. "Hmmmm, but this is not the right toy. They are ... broken toys. Not only it's not up to the standard, but these toys are far from done. Sally Dolly here is missing an eye. Train choo choo doesn't have a colorful paint all over. Mini bake oven doesn't have a light bulb inside, so a child won't know when a cake done being bake. And this cool Indy 500 race car doesn't even have the fourth wheel. No child would like to play with these unfinished toys."

George got defensive. "Look Hugo, do you know how much quota I have to fill to finish all these toys? I have to complete at least 500 toys every day. If out of 500 toys, there are 20 not so perfect ones, so what? They just got to deal with it. Me and my team need to finish these as fast as we could. So what is it's missing some stuff here and there? It's just a toy, it's not a real thing."

Hugo also has his own quota to finish. He has to move about 2000 boxes every day to the inventory room. But Hugo is not satisfied. He then went to the floor supervisor who oversees all the factory's operations. Another elf name Paul.

"Hi Paul!"

"Hey Hugo!"

"Paul, I'd like to report something to you. I think it's important for you to know this before we sending the gifts out to the children. I've found that there are about 20 toys that are not up to standard. You see all these toys in this box? Every single one of them are missing something. Looks incomplete to me. I spoke to elf George earlier, but he doesn't want to hear me out. He..."

"Whoa whoa whoa, you confronted George? You know he's very senior among all of us here."

"Well, I didn't really confronted him. I want to pointed out the imperfections so he can fix it. We don't want to sacrifice quality, do we? This way he will understand and ..."

"You told him that? You pointed out the missing things? That's harsh. You should not talk that way to George. You should soften your approach a bit to him. He's old you know. He can't just take direct feedback like that. You young people should always respect your elf elders. You can't just barge in and start pointing out flaws here and there. Have some elf manners there, boy."

Hugo looked astonished. He can't believe that instead of getting Paul involved to try to fix the issue, he got a feedback of his speech delivery! Unbelievable! Is this fixing the real issues?

"Look Hugo, I know you meant well. It is good that you notice these things. I will let you work with George together to fix this problem. I know you can do it. Just smooth it out. Nobody like being scolded like a toddler, right? You got this."

Poor Hugo.

This young elf thought that by involving George the toy maker, he could get the toys being fixed. Instead, George tuned him out and got busy with his own quota. Hugo went to Paul hoping a resolution to fix the problem George caused, but instead, Paul kept cutting him short and not listening to the whole story.   He was hoping that by getting George's and Paul's attention, he could at least get less broken toys in the next batch, or none at all. He is now thinking if he should just move to the reindeer maintenance department. At least Rudolph won't mind a broken carrot.

But Hugo didn't give up.

He finally went to the big boss, Santa, to report all this. He doesn't mention names, he just proposed that if he found broken toys, he would like to get Santa's permission to just discard the toys and not including those in for the next assembly. Santa agrees and will look into this matter deeply, because Santa doesn't like to waste resources as well.

So what's the moral of the story?
1. Never make a conclusion without having all facts on the table. 
If Paul could just hear Hugo out completely, Paul might be able to see Hugo's point pass the "speech delivery flaw". Hugo could choose to not bring the issue to Paul's attention, but he chose to do the right thing.

2. Don't miss the big picture.
What's the point of making toys? It is for the children, right? George the elf toy maker should be happy to get a feedback from Hugo, because that would make him be able to increase the quality of his work. 500 perfect toys are still better than 480 perfect toys, especially if you're going to allocate the same amount of time of working them.

3. Be resourceful and creative.
Hugo didn't give up. He came up with a solution that Santa agrees (for now), until the next better resolution is made up. Hugo did try to escalate things to the toy maker and floor supervisor, but their responses are not within Hugo's control at all. He thinks outside the box and he delivers a way out.

With time, Hugo, George, and Paul made up. And they live happily ever after. Making 1.9 billion toys for 1.9 billion children in the world.

The end.