Right Down The Line

I sat in a hospital waiting room today, watching the volunteer who ran it.

If even ten percent of the people I dealt with on a daily basis were half as competent and warm and energetic as he was, the world would be a much better place.

Somewhere along the line we have miscalculated how to pick people to do different jobs.  It is possible to be educated, experienced, and even well paid and not be a real asset.  We have tried to legislate fairness and failed abysmally.  We seem to think that being paid a lot of money means we are good at what we do.

All of these things make sense, but they don't seem to really work.  More people than I care to even remember have left me with a bad taste in my mouth after dealing with them.  Blood technicians without a natural aptitude for drawing blood.  Administrators who have no concept of what the people under them do.  Sales people who couldn't give away prize merchandise with the attitude they take to work with them.

Something is wrong.  Most of the best people I see working are volunteers.  That means these people who work for nothing except the satisfaction of the job are worth more, in my humble opinion, than most people who work for salaries and benefits.

It seems the one thing that is missing across the board is respect.

From the top right on down, or perhaps from the bottom right on up, our nation seems to have lost track of the fact that we are all in this together and every single job is dependent upon other jobs in order to be truly successful.  Without people to maintain the buildings and grounds and people to provide power and people to feed all these people and people to organize it all, everything starts to fall apart.  Take any one of these out of the mix and there is a problem. 

If everyone really understood how important each link was in this chain I can't imagine how they could justify half of what goes on at any level.

If we could shift the emphasis to quality -- quality treatment of all employees, quality care for all people, quality products from all sources, there might be less frustration and more satisfaction all around.

I think most people rise to the occasion when they feel what they do really matters.