[Dean Romig]

We know when we send a gun out for work that we are not the only customer they have and should never expect to be put ahead of others, no matter who we are or how much work we have had done there in the past.
That said, and that being something we accept when we send our guns, we should also expect that other jobs, no matter how big or small, should not be placed before ours.

There’s some idioms I learned early in my business life a long time ago...

LIFO - FIFO - FISH all refer to inventory control and they also should pertain to how a business takes care of it’s clients. Ideally, FIFO should pertain to gunsmiths.

LIFO = Last In First Out - not how a business retains it’s customers.
FIFO = First In First Out - the fairest way to treat customers.
FISH = First In Still Here - your business will soon be dead because of word of mouth of the poor way you treat your customers.

The owners of a business who work on the FISH principal have taken in far more work than they can ever hope to complete in a reasonable amount of time and this appears to be about where we are in the case of the shop we are discussing.

I am delighted with the quality of work Brad has done for me but Brad is, sadly, gone - though he did have a set of barrels of mine for about 2 1/2 years.

Once a gun is taken from the ‘holding pen’ and goes to a worker’s bench, and then on to another bench and so on, it shouldn’t take more than a few weeks before it is ready for rust blueing or color case hardening. Those two processes, in an efficently and economically run shop, will necessarily take the longest, waiting for other barrels, frames and small parts to also be ready for those processes and to make it an economically feasible process. Over a year to wait is unacceptable and indicates to me that, not only have they taken in too much work but they are also working on guns out of sequence or using the LIFO principal.






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