Reading lag without drowning the morning shift

Lag is not a feeling that “the job was slow.” Lag is a feed still running when the next job was allowed to start. If the warehouse load may not begin before the billing extract finishes, and the extract is still writing at 05:12, the hatch sits on the extract, not on the warehouse.

We rule the promised hour as a vertical. Duration is a horizontal strip. Where the strip crosses the rule, the hatch begins. Directors can see the crossing from the doorway. Operators can argue with it if the promised hour was fiction — and they should. A false cutover makes honest feeds look late.

What we refuse to do is paint every long job red. A feed that is allowed four hours and uses three is not late. A feed that is allowed forty minutes and uses forty-one is late, even if nobody felt hurried. The morning shift drowns when those two cases share a colour.

If you are preparing logs for a health review, write down the promised hours before you send durations. Without the hours, we can draw strips. We cannot draw lag.