The Metaphysics of Quality or Ten Little Indians

A few days ago we had a complaint from an agitated customer who was upset enough to send a whole team to the plant to get to the bottom of the problem. (BTW the problem would have passed un-noticed by the majority of large European players so Hurrah that we are really getting quality conscious in this country).

Once the team reached the factory our fellows managed to convince their fellows that the problem that occurred could not have occurred because of the superior systems that we followed and the way that the machines worked. All agreed and the inspection team left - no one had looked at the actual article and all had relied on verbal descriptions of the problem.

Sadly, once pointed out, a blind man could have seen the problem and any of dozens of people could have figured out why it had happened - operator error, which is what it is always. Luckily the customer was dogged and we did take responsibility and have fixed the problem. Along the way the customer upgraded to a higher product line so the unpleasantness had a silver lining. But it could have ended in tears.

The question is why Indian's do the following:

1) Argue about what might have been instead of what was
2) Never admit a mistake