我把木质的桌面敲得咚咚咚响，对着手里的电话听筒喊着，交期！交期！交期！那声音很大，在空荡荡的办公室里弹回来，把我自己的耳朵震得有点聋。
王厂长在那头，声音隔着几百公里的电波传过来，伴随着一下又一下吧嗒烟的声音。他吐出一口烟的声音，听起来比我的叫喊要扎实得多。
他说，我知道，但我也有难处。
我说，你的难处是你的，我的交期是我的。
他说，面料厂交不了货，我车间里那条线一天也不能停，机器一停，工人的肚子就要叫。现在10万件的大单已经排上了，不能拉下来，一拉下来，我的客户就要和我干仗。
他说，您的订单是订单，他的订单也是订单，都是订单，就得有个先来后到，或者轻重缓急。
我觉得他的话像是一堵刷得很好的白墙，无论我怎么用力砸过去，最后也只是在墙上留下几道黑乎乎的手印。10万件的大单是一个数字，我的几千件也是一个数字，但在机器眼里，它们只是不同数量的衣服，需要耗费掉同样长的时间。
后来我把手放下了，桌子不再响了，电话那头的烟似乎也抽完了。我发现我敲桌子并不是为了让王厂长害怕，他见过的催货人比我见过的布还多；我只是需要制造一点声音，好让自己觉得在这个下午，我确实为了这批货做过一些努力。王厂长继续在电话那头说着那些面料厂的借口，那些借口去年他用过，前年他也用过，换了个年份听起来依然很合理。
我们谁也说服不了谁，因为解决交期的办法不在电话里，也不在桌子上，它在那些还没织出来的纱线里。这很傻，但没关系，我对着话筒说了一句“你看着办吧”，然后挂断了电话。
屋子里重新安静下来，10万件的单子在几十公里外继续转动，我的订单则继续在排产表里躺着，像一粒掉进石头堆里的沙砾。
Waiting for the Delivery Date
I kept pounding on the wooden desk — thud, thud, thud — while shouting into the phone:“Delivery date! Delivery date! Delivery date!”
The sound bounced around the empty office and came back at me so hard it almost made my ears ring.
Factory Manager Wang was on the other end of the line. His voice traveled through hundreds of kilometers of cables and static, mixed with the dry clicking sound of him tapping cigarette ash. Every time he exhaled smoke, it somehow sounded steadier than my shouting.
“I know,” he said. “But I’ve got my own problems too.”
“Your problems are yours,” I said. “My delivery date is mine.”
He sighed.
“The fabric mill still hasn’t shipped the fabric. And the production line in my workshop can’t stop for even one day. The moment the machines stop, the workers still need to eat. Right now there’s a 100,000-piece order already running on the line. I can’t pull it off midway. If I do, my client will tear me apart.”
Then he added:
“Your order is an order. Their order is also an order. They’re all orders. There has to be a sequence. Something always comes first.”
His words felt like a freshly painted white wall. No matter how hard I threw myself against it, all I could leave behind were a few dirty handprints.
A 100,000-piece order is just a number.
My few thousand pieces are also just a number.
To the machines, they are only different piles of clothing waiting to consume the same amount of time.
Eventually I lowered my hand. The desk stopped shaking. The cigarette on the other end of the call seemed to have burned down as well.
And then I realised something.
I hadn’t been slamming the desk because I thought Manager Wang would be afraid of me. He had dealt with more people chasing delivery dates than I had ever seen clothing.
I was only trying to make some noise.
Just enough noise to convince myself that, at least for this afternoon, I had done something for this shipment.
Manager Wang kept talking, repeating the same explanations about delayed fabric mills — excuses he had already used last year, and the year before that. Only the calendar had changed. The excuses still sounded perfectly reasonable.
Neither of us could convince the other.
Because the solution to a delayed delivery was never inside the phone call, and never on top of the desk.
It was buried somewhere inside yarn that hadn’t even been woven yet.
It was stupid, really.
But that was fine.
In the end, I just said, “Do what you can,” and hung up.
The room became quiet again.
Somewhere dozens of kilometers away, that 100,000-piece order was still running nonstop through the machines.
And my order continued lying there on the production schedule like a grain of sand lost inside a pile of stones.