You Only Had One Job

Things can be done better. Everywhere I look, I see mediocrity. It’s like people have given up. The bar is low, and very, very few are struggling to push it up.

And it’s everywhere. It’s in products we buy. It’s in services we consume. It’s our service providers. Every single thing could be done better.

How often have you called a service provider, and had to repeatedly describe your problem as you were being passed around from representative to representative? How many times have you had to return a faulty product?

There are many reasons for this. There’s Peter’s Principle. There’s office culture of discouraging competition. There’s sheer laziness.

So what can we do? Not much, I think. We can leave detailed feedback and hope the company takes it to heart. All too often I come across a restaurant where the food and service are objectively sub-par, yet the reviews are very complimenting. Why? It’s a mystery. Speak up.

We can also be patient and persistent until we get what we’re after. We pay with time and energy for getting our way. At least we sometimes get our way, right?

But really, I’m not hopeful of there being a noticeable, across-the-board change. It seems we can better ourselves, but we have to live with mediocrity around us. Rant over.

Have you experienced mediocrity? How do you approach it? Let me know!