The Musings Of An Opinionated Sod [Help Me Grow!]

Recently I was in Nottingham and while on one of my walks, I passed this …

“What is it?” I hear you cry.

Well, it’s a notice about the busses.

Tied with a crappy piece of string to a branch of a nearby shrub because – I assume – the people who had to put it up thought it would take too much effort, cost or complexity to attach it to the actual bus stop.

You know, so passengers could maybe actually see it.

Now I appreciate Nottingham County Council is basically bankrupt so they can’t be spending money willy-nilly … but what the fuck is the point attaching a notice to a shrub that isn’t even next to the actual bus stop???

It all smacks of someone having to hit their KPI’s …

Where the focus is being able to say you did what was asked rather than did what was needed … even though you know what you did wasn’t in the spirit of the original request.

And while you could blame that on the clarity of the brief, it’s still an exercise in deliberate ignorance.

Or arrogance.

Or idiocy.

It reminds me of the toilets I wrote about in Singapore way back in 2006.

Another example of someone ‘executing’ rather than ‘accomplishing’ …

Also known as ‘modern business practice’ … where it increasingly feels like a job well done and well crafted is viewed as an unnecessary cost, when it can just be churned out without any consideration.

Or worse, when someone does that and then tries to hide their laziness behind ambiguous language or claims of cost efficiency.

Which is why I keep going back to the words a father of an old colleague of mine once said:

“If you haven’t got the time to do it right at the start, when will you have the time?”

When will companies realise that if they treat their customers like fools, they’ll value them accordingly?