Hole is Hole

I am working for a German company in consumer goods. And I have this lovely colleague from Thailand, who is an inspector in Quality Control.

So as I have not seen many factories from the inside, yet, I asked her a bunch of questions about productions processes, inspections, techniques and stuff. Since I know Bangladesh a little better after my last stay, I was curious, whether factory owners tried to bribe her or not. She said that this has never happened, but of course they always try to downplay minor mistakes on garments to pass the inspection.

So she told me this fun story about an incident she once had. She was checking garments during an inspection and found holes on the inside of an item. As they were not seen when wearing it and it didn’t have any effect on the overall product, they still were mistakes for quality standards but the factory manager tried to argue his way out of it. Instead of arguing, my colleague just pointed at the hole and asked him to spell what he saw. So he did. As tough and funny as she is, she kindly replied “exactly, hole is hole” and the matter was off the table.