Bethlehem Steel quality-at-no-cost rejection

Tom's foundational autobiographical case for why he left industry — proposing a free quality improvement and being told "won't help us sell more steel."

I'll tell you this. My lesson on quality, when I worked for Bethlehem Steel — I don't even remember what it was, but I had come up with some process change they could do in the mill that would improve the quality at essentially no cost. I proposed this to my boss, who was an MIT PhD. He said, "Why do we want to do this?" I said, "We make better quality product." Remember, this was 1975. I had to spend a couple of days lobbying him on why we would want to make better product, even if it cost us nothing. Why should we ask for a change? He finally, sheepishly, went up to his boss, who was a PhD from Lehigh University, and got me an audience with the second-level-up boss. I went in saying, "Look, this will cost us nothing, we can make better quality." He says, "We don't want to do that." I said, "Why don't you want to make better quality?" He says, "Won't help us sell more steel." That was the attitude. Everything was how many tons of steel you poured.