My old boss at the print shop asked if I wanted to be right or be helpful, and I wrote him a letter I never mailed

Rowan Thomas · 2026-10-14T10:30:05.250261+00:00

Back around 2009 I worked at a small print shop in Lansing, and I was the guy who corrected everyone. Customer files came in with wrong bleed, wrong color mode, you name it, and I would send back these long emails pointing out every mistake. Felt good, honestly. Then my boss Dave pulled me aside after a job for a local church got delayed two days, and he asked me one thing: do you want to be right or do you want to be helpful? I sat with that for a long time and I did not like the answer. I started fixing the small stuff myself when it took five minutes and flagging only the things that really needed a customer call, and the weird part is the number of rush jobs we had to redo dropped off a cliff. I wrote Dave a letter a couple years after he retired, thanking him and admitting I was kind of a jerk about it, but I never sent it. It still sits in a drawer with a bunch of other papers. Curious if anyone here got feedback like that and how you handled it, or if you ever sent the letter.

💡Thought Shares

Loading…

My old boss at the print shop asked if I wanted to be right or be helpful, and I wrote him a letter I never mailed | Apology Letters Unsent - Thought Shares