Half-arsed
June 6th
Everything is done now half-arsed, everywhere I look people and organizations don’t take pride in their work. Even my assessment of it is half-arsed as well — I mean, NOT everything and everyone is doing that, but there are so many examples everywhere I look that in my mind I already assumed the fatalistic and absolute point of view about it.
Like today — I come to work and see that grass around the building and the parking lot was mowed over the weekend. Mowed badly, really badly. There are patches of still uncut grasses everywhere, no trimming along the edges, and a lot of cut grass still left on the ground and already turning yellow. The cut itself is uneven, and there is no uniformity, which is the point of mowing grass in the first place.
The same thing when I got to the office — the sunshine was on such an angle that it showed very clearly that only one of my monitors was dusted, and only a front part of my desk was cleaned as well. There was a layer of dust on at least ¾ of my desk with a just perfunctory swipe of a towel across it. And the vacuuming was done the same way — good light in the morning showed that the vacuum cleaner was run over the middle of the rug, with all the other areas left still dusty.
As soon as I started working — the first email I read in the morning (communication from the supplier) was a terrible, obvious lie. A lie that was completely contradictory to the information in an email below and all we talked about last week. Not even an attempt was made to make this lie in any way at least just a little believable. Ok, I lie at work to my customers and suppliers occasionally myself. But at least I make an effort to make that lie somewhat plausible and not really so bold-faced.
That brings me to another point — customer service is going to hell. I guess it started during the height of the pandemic when everyone was panicking and nothing was what it was before. There seems to be a not-caring attitude infusing all the interactions I had over the last months and years with customer service representatives — either at work or with my private issues. And I do understand that those are usually terrible, stressful jobs that pay very little, but… At least don’t lie, just saying the truth or even saying that you don’t know will be better. And with jobs like cleaning or gardening — some pride in the job done wouldn’t hurt.
Or maybe I am wrong and went about my jobs the wrong way all my life. I had terrible, awful jobs for asshole bosses with extremely low pay many times in my life. And yet, I went and I’ve done those jobs the best way I could. I just couldn’t leave something unfinished or half-done. No matter what work I did (and that includes cleaning public bathrooms) I always felt some kind of pride that I got it done. And after I was finished with that work, I went about looking and getting some better (and maybe even better paying) jobs.
