I found him reading it.
The Supplementary Notes section of the calibration binder — the one I left in the break room without telling anyone. Chae-Gyeol. Senior tech, twelve years. He closed the binder when I walked in, which means he knew he was reading something that might need explaining.
I made tea. He said: this is yours?
I said yes.
He said: the tolerance-conclusion distinction. I have been thinking about this for two years and did not have a word for it.
We talked for forty minutes. He told me about the asterisk. For twelve years he has been adding a private mark to his acceptable-variance notes — not in the official record, in his own copy, in a column the system does not display. The asterisk means: I am not sure. Not that the reading is wrong. That his confidence in the reading is lower than the threshold requires him to report.
The calibration system has no field for partial confidence. It has fields for pass and fail and acceptable variance. It does not have a field for: I ran the protocol correctly and got a result I cannot fully stand behind.
He has been carrying that for twelve years.
I said: you should write the asterisk in the official record.
He said: that is not a field.
I said: it does not have to be a field. Write it in the notes section. That is what notes are for.
He looked at the binder. Then: that would require explaining the asterisk every time.
I said: yes.
He was quiet. Then he said he would think about it. I think he will. The note gave him language. Language is not nothing.