My dad worked 31 years at a plant in Ohio and he said the exact same thing, that the days he found nothing were the days he did his job right. The crack you caught probably would've turned into a wheel coming apart on a runway somewhere, and nobody would've ever known why. It's wild how one extra wipe with a rag is the whole difference between a normal day and a disaster. Outsiders see the copy paste part and miss that the copy paste part is the job.

Oh man I feel this so hard. Found a "renovated" bathroom in my last place where the guy had used flex seal tape on the shower drain and caulked over moldy grout instead of just redoing it. Ended up ripping out half the subfloor and my wife still brings it up every time we talk about buying another house.

Man, that hits home. My buddy runs a small welding shop and swears by this $19 Harbor Freight angle grinder he bought as a backup years ago. His $200 DeWalt quit on him twice in the same stretch and that cheap thing just keeps going. He finally gave up on the fancy ones and bought three more of the cheap ones so he always has a spare. Makes you wonder how much of what we pay for is just the name on the side.