Disappointed by Mediocrity

My mother had few rules more important than be the best that you can be at whatever you choose to be. She had grown up with little education beyond the one room school house she walked to as a child, but she never let that hold her back. She learned how to drive and and left the fields of Yadkin County for the big city of Mount Airy, North Carolina where she owned a very successful beauty shop for a couple of decades. She also became the matriarch of her extended family. She was determined that her sister’s six children would have the opportunity for successful lives. Two of them followed her and became beauticians. They all leaned on her and came to think of the house where she lived in Mount Airy as a gateway to another world. In time as she aged, she would lean on them which is how families should work.
Mother was also a great cook and gardener. She made it clear from as early as I have memories that I was going to college. She expected no less and I felt bound by her wishes until I graduated from Harvard in the summer of 1971.
Mother lived to be ninety-three and six months. She has been gone for twenty-two years. She loved life, travel, gardening, and working. The other side of mother was someone who long remembered anyone she believed had wronged her or not delivered on their part of an agreement. She never believed that fancy had to part of our lives but that did not preclude things being special. Even in her seventies she would quickly choose to work three days putting together a family celebration rather that hiring someone to cater it. Part of that was her belief that she could do a better job than most caterers. Most family members would agree that she was right.
The world has changed a lot in the two decades since mother died and I have gotten a lot older. At one time matriarchs like my mother and her sisters could hold their families close together. It is much harder today. Families no longer work the land where they were born, they live where they can find jobs often in a different state. People have a harder time getting together because of distance and the divisive politics that now ravages our nation. We can no longer even agree on what the facts are. Even today’s newscasters are jokes compared to the giants of the past. Our economy is now filled with franchises where the locations are run by poorly trained teenagers working for minimum and caring even less. The soul seems to be gone from the economy. Now it is just about making money. When I joined Apple for a nearly twenty-year run, we were out to change the world with products that everyone still remembers. In the over two decades since I left Apple, my only enduring memory of the company is Tim Cook on bended knee with a gift for our morally challenged president.
Now the business model is come up with a good idea, hook people on it, and figure out how to make as much money as possible while making the product cheaper and sustaining it with often borderline deceptive marketing. The formula for government is worse. The party in power has spent the last thirty years convincing people that government is bad even though people really do want things like good roads, education, social security and medical care.
With evangelical Christians giving religion a bad name, Congress barely holding a 12% approval rating while clearly in the pockets of special interests, and families more challenged at staying close together than ever, things do not look great for our society.

I believe the only hope for society is to demand more from each individual. We should expect everyone to be proud of their accomplishments and the work they do while understanding the impact their efforts and words have on the lives of others.

Instead of the salesman who sold us our $40K plus new car telling us to contact the parts department to get the forgotten owners manual, go find one and drive it to us. I would have done that when I was selling computers in the eighties. I would not have thought twice about it. It is how I would have expected to be treated myself. My customers deserved no less.
If someone makes me a mediocre sub or sandwich that costs $10, I am going to let them know about it. On the flip side if someone does a great job and fixes me a memorable meal for a reasonalbe price at a restaurant, I am going to give them some praise including a positive Google review.
As much as I want to be surprised by the extra individual effort that can make difference from Congress to a sandwich shop, I am moving forward with the knowledge that I hold our Constitution in higher regard and understand more about its creation and protection than most representatives. I plan to keep explaining that to them until my digital ink runs out.

I can also make a better sandwich than any teenager in a sub shop. As the cost of eating rises, I expect to eat out less. There are already too many bungled orders to expect things to turn around soon. There are few things worse than spending hard-earned money for something that disappoints.

I will also continue to highlight those services that continue to deliver great value and are proud of the work that they do.