Following through from the episode of the clock repair, I was narrating the experience to my dad yesterday, and he told me this little story.
After World War 2, the Americans imported some hitech equipment from Japan. After initial trials and a month of functioning the machine stopped working. Just died on them. They did what they could, first level troubleshooting, frantic calls, local expertise, but nothing helped. They finally got the Japanese company to send their expert, who arrived after a week.
The mechanic came, spent a while with the machine, finally took out his screw driver and tightened a bolt. The machine came to life.
He gave them a bill for 9000 dollars (remember this was way back in the forties) plus expenses. The American officials were shocked, they were like '9000 dollars? you just tightened a bolt'.
The mechanic said ' It's ten dollars for tightening the bolt, and 8990 dollars for knowing which bolt had to be tightened'.
The story was so very apt. My watch repair guy charged me the ten rupees for tightening the bolt, but not the 8990 dollars for knowing which bolt to tighten.
Big lesson there....it could be about 'being gracious' or it could be about how 'we value what we are worth'.
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