Print shop manager removes ‘Customer Approval’ status to make production numbers look better, only to create more confusion and slow down the entire process: ‘It undermines customer confidence’

Cata Holmes • Writer

Oct 14, 2026 8:00 AM EDT

What happens when making the numbers look good becomes more important than keeping customers informed?

A new operations manager was worried about how bad the numbers were looking. It didn't make any sense: they had customers, and things were getting printed in time. After doing some research, he realized that the problem wasn't in the printing process, but in the system. The "Awaiting Customer Approval" status was eliminated, and now, every order was marked "In Production" as soon as the proof was sent to the customer, even if they hadn't approved it yet.

Sometimes, when a new manager joins a company, they want to change things, no matter how important they are to the working process. It's logical: they are new, they want to stand out, and fix every issue in a matter of days. This leads them to make decisions that sometimes aren't the best ones, causing struggles and new problems that weren't there before. And this has to do with focusing more on results rather than the importance of the process.

In the case of a print shop, having the customers review the material before it is printed is a fundamental part of the process. Imagine having to run a bunch of big banners, only to realize that a phone number is incorrect, or the colours aren't vibrant enough. Yes, that implies having to re-print everything again. That's exactly why we understand the importance of having the material be approved by the client.

When the manager decided to eliminate that status, some things took twice the time to get printed because they had to review every single note, or when there was something that needed to be checked, the client didn't have a way of knowing this, because the system told them that the material was being produced. We can put ourselves in the shoes of the employee who had to deal with the call of a very angry customer, because he couldn't believe that the order was in production for nine days straight.

*Print shop employee working with a screen printing machine.*
*Stock photo unrelated.*

My manager removed "waiting for approval" from our system because it made us look slow. Now customers think we're printing orders we haven't been cleared to print.

I work at a small commercial print shop. We do signs, banners, promotional materials, that sort of thing.

Until recently, our order system had a status called "Awaiting Customer Approval." Pretty self- explanatory. We send the customer a proof, they check the design and spelling, and nothing gets printed until they approve it.

Last month we got a new operations manager who decided that having so many orders sitting in that status made our production numbers look terrible.

His solution was to get rid of the status.

Now the moment we send a proof, the order gets marked "In Production." Even if the customer hasn't responded. Even if they've specifically asked us to hold off.

I pointed out that customers can see this status in their portal. He said it would encourage them to respond faster.

Well, on Tuesday a customer called asking why the signs for their new location hadn't shipped yet. Their portal had shown "In Production" for nine days.

I checked the email thread. They hadn't approved the proof because they were still confirming the phone number that needed to go on the signs.

When I explained this, they were understandably confused. They thought we'd already printed everything.

After the call, my manager told me I shouldn't have said the order wasn't in production because it "undermines customer confidence."

What was I supposed to say? That the printer is working really hard on their unapproved phone number?

*Print shop employee handling a stack of printed material beside an industrial printing machine.*
*Model portrayal.*

I will never understand managers who prioritize numbers over the work process. Besides, improving the numbers and having a more successful customer experience isn't something that can be solved in a matter of seconds. It requires deep investigation of how the shop works to identify where the flaw is. We can see how the manager ruined the experience of this customer, who thought that they would have his material done, but essentially, it was taking twice the time to get it done. And the worst part? The material wasn't even in production! It was still on hold, waiting for an approval that nobody knew was needed.

The production guys hate this too, because now they have to open individual orders and dig through the notes to figure out what can actually be printed.

I suggested bringing back the original status, even if we rename it something more positive. Apparently that would be "moving backward."

I've worked here three years and genuinely liked the job until this started. I don't want to fight with a manager over a dropdown menu, but I also don't want to be the person explaining why we printed 500 signs with the wrong information.

*Printing company worker operating commercial printing equipment.*
*Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.*

Has anyone dealt with a manager who would rather make the numbers look good than fix the actual process? How do you push back without becoming the designated difficult employee?

Joy2b The easiest way to handle this is to flip two other stakeholders. You could quietly get a very important customer to say explicitly: Here's a valuable order for next quarter, please put it in this status until this date.

Common Active_2960 ah yes, the classic "if we stop measuring the problem it ceases to exist" approach my favorite part is how you're somehow the bad guy for telling a customer the truth about their own order. like you were supposed to just let them believe the signs had been printed and were floating in some mystical shipping void

MathObserver It will be interesting to see if he gets pushback from his management on why it is now taking so much longer to produce your products.

medic-131 As opposed to addressing why approvals were so slow... SMH

kawaeri The best thing you can do is nudge your customers into making a complaint about that no longer being a status. Managers like this fold for anger customers, not lowly employees.

A situation like this is a good reminder to see how a company, or a shop, works as a whole. When the procedure is slow and something needs to be fixed, it usually never comes from a single step, nor from a status system that ended up being the most important part. Taking the time to understand the workflow and how each step contributes to the final result is, in the end, what can help reveal what needs to be fixed… not simply deleting a step from the system.

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Print shop manager removes ‘Customer Approval’ status to make production numbers look better, only to create more confusion and slow down the entire process: ‘It undermines customer confidence’

What happens when making the numbers look good becomes more important than keeping customers informed?

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