[woleium]

The line worker has a canny instinct for the right answer long before the statistics are significant though.

Kinda what Gladwell talks about in Blink

[bluGill]

Sometimes, but a few times those instincts are very very wrong. Blink is interesting, be sure to read the criticism though https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blink:_The_Power_of_Thinking_W... - it isn't clear that the book is correct.

[throwway120385]

In my experience, the line worker's instincts are to be trusted but verified. If we blindly follow every crisis from the line we'd quickly find ourselves in a pit. These crises need to be backed up with context and a sense of criticality as there are finite resources to work through problems, and solving one person's immediate problem on the line may have a crushing impact elsewhere.