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The article proposes a method for ethnographic study called an “interview with the double”, and suggests an interpretation of the social processes of collective decision making as a situated activity. It provides an interpretative description of “quota restriction” – as the management of ambiguity. A linguistic construct (related to the case we study of workers on an assembly line in a battery production unit: “today the plates are soft”) emphasises the social functions of this symbolic phrase, internally to the workers’ occupational community as a symbol producing collective identity and social bonding, as well as externally as a means to control power relations with management. For the “quota restriction” action to occur, full agreement on values and meanings is not necessary : an unstable minimal accord may be sufficient insofar as it stems from a negoctative process which manages : a) the ambiguity inherent in the social process of interpreting ; b) the ambiguity of the implicature from one interpretation to others ; c) the ambiguity of implementing the action.