Journal
What a date stamp actually records
Offices treat the date stamp as a clock. Applicants treat it as a promise. In the rooms we sit in, it is usually neither. It is a pad of ink and a wrist.
A planning pack can arrive at 4:40 in the afternoon, sit in a wire basket because the public counter has closed the shutter, and receive Monday’s date because that is when the officer next lifts the stamp. The journey began on Friday. The official beginning is Monday. Both facts can be true, and the map must carry both.
We also meet stamps that live in drawers, stamps that belong to a person rather than a desk, and stamps whose date is changed only when someone remembers. If your statutory clock is counted from the stamp, the first question in a journey audit is not “how fast are we?” It is “whose wrist, and on which morning?”
When we draw a map we put the stamp in its furniture: on the counter, in the drawer, or in the pocket of the only person who comes in on Wednesday. That is more useful than arguing with the ink.