Sometimes it feels like you practically have to "supervise" everybody who offers some kind of service... even though providing that service is their job.
Like being at the deli counter at the local supermarket and having to point out that the baked chicken that's the "advertised special" is not actually what they are putting in my container, even though I specifically asked for the baked chicken that's on special, while pointing to it.
Once that hit home, I actually had to point out where the correct bin of chicken was located.
No, not a new employee. And I do not have some sort of secret advantage, like I work for the supermarket.
I remember when we had the plumber out some years ago to fix an in-ground leak — something I'm sure the plumber gets called out for quite often — I ended up being the one to point out that "a good place to start" might be the patch where the grass was remarkably lusher and greener than all the surrounding rather brown and dry areas.
Maybe I'm crediting people with having something more than common sense... but that's not exactly rocket science, is it?
Or in a different plumbing situation, using food dye to track the water flow direction of a leak. Also not rocket science, methinks.
I've found myself in similar situations with a carpenter, as well as with a stonemason.
The question here isn't whether I "knew something," but the fact that I have to constantly stay alert in order to ensure that someone who is getting paid to know better isn't screwing up my order, or job.
Of course, there's always the disturbing possibility — which I am not overlooking — that most people simply don't care whether what they are paying for is the way it's supposed to me. Maybe "adequate" is simply good enough.
The other possibility is that most "customers" simply aren't curious enough about the world around them to actually know any better.
My parents built a house in Mesa, Arizona back in the early 90's, and my mother — who hand built the house I grew up in with my father — was on site every day, checking out what the contractor and workers were doing, and how they were doing it.
She actually caught several dozen problems that would have ended up on a punch list later, and would have been much more difficult to correct then, than at the point of origin.
Quite a few of those building workers ended up learning some "old world tricks" that probably came in handy in their subsequent work.
Again, the point here is less that my mother was clever, than the fact that she even needed to be thinking about these things.
I suppose I can speculate on what is actually happening till I am blue in the face, but I can't help but wonder whether the level of inaccuracies I see all around me are actually a side effect of the pervasive "shortening" of all things in the world... everything must be shorter, faster, with the result that there simply isn't time to do things well, anymore.
Maybe even the fact that some of my electronics malfunction after a few months is a side effect of the fact that by then "I should be shopping for the NEXT model."
So why would I even care that the previous one is even breaking down?
Pay me no mind: I am "obsolete" because I still create and read long form content like this!
There are time at which I am actually grateful for the fact that I am getting old... and I won't have that many more years of interacting with what seems like decay to me.
Of course, pretty much every generation has said that about subsequent generations...
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Created at 2024-09-16 22:41 PDT
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