The Phone Call That Started Innocently Enough
Many years ago, back in my Golden Chemical Products days – a direct sales company not unlike Amway – I received an industrial enquiry. A major optical firm in the Midlands, famous throughout the industry for grinding lenses. They were a serious, large-scale operation, supplying the entire optical industry. So, naturally, I was rather excited.
I turned up ready to discuss my product range. The director loved it – and bought several of the products on the spot.
Now, you might think that’s where the story ends. But, it is absolutely where it begins.
A Little Science Goes a Long Way
One of the things that made our products exceptional was something called a surfactant. If you’ve ever noticed that horrible grey ring around your bath after a soak – that’s what happens without one. A surfactant holds particles in suspension, keeping residue floating in the water rather than settling on surfaces or, in the case of an industrial production line, clogging up the pipes.
So, the gentleman bought the product, which was a highly concentrated liquid cleaning solution, to clean out his factory pipes. He was happy, I was happy, so, job done.
Or so I thought.
Enter the Foreman
Somewhere between the sale and the weekend, this concentrated cleaning product found its way into the hands of the production foreman. Now, the foreman was actually quite logical in his thinking. He reasoned: we grind lenses all day, it creates residue, residue can block pipes – and this product has a surfactant in it that keeps residue in suspension. Perfect!
He was, in principle, absolutely right.
The instructions on the bottle called for one cap. One small, modest, sensible capful – for the entire production system.
The foreman looked at that cap. He looked at the bottle. He looked at the vast production line stretching out before him, a conveyor system through which the lenses flowed on their liquid journey through the grinding process.
And he thought: one cap simply isn’t going to cut it.
So he poured the lot in.
The Great Bubble Catastrophe
What happened next is something I only heard about by phone – and I am almost sorry I wasn’t there to witness it with my own eyes.
Bubbles everywhere.
Not a few charming frothy bubbles overflowing, but, the entire factory floor – the whole of the production line – disappeared under a rolling, unstoppable tide of foam. You couldn’t see the machinery or the conveyor, apparently. You couldn’t see anything at all actually, because the bubbles just kept coming.
It took them all day to sort out, the director said.
When I finally got the phone call, I could hear the disbelief still lingering in his voice.
“That stuff’s powerful,” he said.
“Yes,” I replied. “I did tell you that.”
What This Taught Me About People (and Products)
I’ve seen it happen time and time again throughout my career. You give someone clear instructions, and there’s always someone who thinks: yes, but a bit more won’t hurt.
Whether it’s a cleaning product, a business strategy, or a piece of advice – more is not always, well, more. Sometimes the most powerful thing you have is already working perfectly at the dose it was designed for. The skill is trusting the process.
The foreman wasn’t a foolish man at all. His logic was sound. He just didn’t believe that something so small could be so effective.
And that is a lesson that applies far beyond the factory floor.
If you have something that works – trust it. Follow the instructions. And don’t pour the whole bottle in!
