To make the brass department more efficient, Pullman’s executive team did something counterintuitive: they made its operation more complicated. If you needed some brass work done, you now had to submit an official form that contained all the relevant information. To prevent employees from circumventing this process and reverting to the more convenient status quo of informally bothering workers, they literally locked the door and screened the windows. You now had no choice but to use the newly enforced “regular channel.”
