THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2017
It is a dentist’s office and I am in his chair. The spot light over the chair doesn’t work, and before I come into this particular bay it takes twenty minutes of playing with the drill, I hear it from the other bay (where I am on hold), to get the darn air drill to work with enough power for the dentist to be comfortable using it. No matter. The drill loses power and gets stuck in my tooth partway through the procedure and I feel the dentist yank it out. This particular hand-piece slows to a stop every time he takes the burr to my tooth to prep it for the implant that is soon to come, and I can feel him lean into pressing the pedal to get the hand-piece to activate, which is seems to do in an irregular, or even unpredictable way. Not only does his chair seem like it is forty years old and malfunctioning, but his assistant, who tells me she has been working for close to twenty years, can’t keep organized and leaves three times to find items that should have been at her fingertips. At one point I am stuck with my mouth open and the dentist is calling the assistant back to help when the assistant sees an old friend walk by and the assistant leaves the procedure to tell her friend not to go anywhere until she gets a chance to speak. It was pathetic really, this dentist calling his assistant back to help him and letting her know that she can call her friend later.
It seems like its the way it goes now. Last night a cashier checked me out at the local grocery who barely stopped reading her tabloid long enough to realize that I was paying with something that required her to press a different button on her console. In both of these cases the work was done. I will be getting a new crown on my tooth in three weeks, and I paid for and carried my daughter’s lunch items home, but not as it should have been done.
And what am I to say here? I felt a little second-rate when a cashier didn’t think me worth my time to look up from her magazine, but it wasn’t only me that was treated rudely, and I will still use that grocer. The dentist seemed to have done a fine job, and I will still go back, but I can’t help but think my jaw is a little more sore because the assistant and outdated equipment made the procedure take longer. Is it enough that the job gets done at economy value? Should I insist on more, or should I recognize that shopping at an economy grocery, or using the dentist that takes my insurance gives me the low, economy value I pay for?
This seems to be related to conversations I have with my teens today at home, and coworkers at, well, work. We provide only what we are payed to give anymore. There doesn’t seem to be pride in giving the best simply because it is the product of our hands. Why? Don’t give me the stupid “Every kid got a trophy so they think they deserve it” argument, but I wonder if the shiny plastic participation trophy does have something to do with it.
Imagine this- You are a five year-old soccer player with a shiny trophy about the length of your arm or a medallion like what they give those athletes on TV. Its pretty cool, but the trophy comes after a season of “Don’t worry about the score honey. You are all winners!” Do you really think that kid took the whole “everyone is a winner” message to heart? At least one of those kids on that team has an older brother who is stuffing his plastic trophies in a box or using them for target practice of some kind. Really, there is nothing quite as satisfying as shooting the head off some stupid shiny plastic baseball player, and the weight at the base of the trophy keeps it in perfect position to do so. I won’t say how I know. The kids learn pretty quickly that plastic has no value, and they dutifully take their trinkets with joy because they like looking at them. After all, that really is the only record they get of their exploits on the field at six years old. They go on the shelf as a point of interest more than as a point of pride, unless you count the pride of getting a complete set.
Kids get the lesson early on- people give you shiny things of no value for base effort so don’t give extra effort unless more is on the line. My son worked his heart out for a company that treated him badly because they paid him well above minimum wage. He quit when he was worn out, but now I see him give OK service to a company that barely puts out ten cents above minimum wage. In his mind its barely worth is to give extra effort for “plastic”.
When I was a teenager I read a short story about a boy who mowed a lawn for a neighbor and strove to produce the perfect lawn mowing job. The story detailed how he paid attention to every detail and made everything perfect, and how after all that effort he earned the respect and higher pay of the neighbor. I decided then that I would try hard to always produce my best product. I regretfully fail more than I like, but I feel like I do better work than many around me care to try to do.
I want our society to to understand that it is more than what you receive in return that gives your effort value. The value you put into your work makes you better for yourself, and can add value in so many ways in the eyes of the world.
Originally posted on http://12251974.blogspot.com/2017/09/the-way-it-goes.html?m=1