chickenThere's a big difference between messing up a ski and messing up a ski and trying to hide it.
I've never heard of a "three strike rule". All that would lead to is a shop that never has an experienced tech.
Yes there is a big difference, especially when is pretty obvious just from looking at the ski.
Im not sure how the three strike rule would lead to an inexperienced tech, a binding mount with the proper jig is pretty damn hard to mess up, if you manage to screw up three times in a season you don’t deserve to be a binding tech and will get demoted to wax scraper or rental slave.
The last shop I worked in had 7 techs who rotated through different roles every night, mounted a shit ton of skis throughout the season, I would guess near 500. And had maybe 3 botched mounts total all season from three different techs. Each time the store bought them a new ski and kept the old one, and each tech got a strike.