Seth Godin's #Day 6 #YourTurnChallenge

When I was growing up my Mom spent what I thought was an inordinate amount of time making sure her children looked "acceptable." Acceptable was defined as a collared shirt, slacks, no jeans, brushed hair, clean teeth, no wrinkles, shirt tucked in; you get it. I thought this was dumb and exhausting most of the time, but my Mom said it was about taking pride in your appearance and yourself. In fact, she went so far as to say that it was always better to show up overdressed vs underdressed to show respect for your host or hostess. Yawn.

But now I get it. In the military, beds are tucked within an inch of their lives and things are scrubbed that I don't think ever see the light of day, but someone, somewhere knows they are clean. When I was married to a chef who spent most of his career in very high end New York restaurants before he moved with his bride out west, he spent a crazy amount of time keeping things orderly. Well, I thought it was crazy. At the end of a shift, things were re-plated, "recontainered," rewrapped, washed, tidied up and organized as if the principal of kitchens was walking in for a formal inspection. He would tell me that it was a matter of good practice, hygiene of course, and, well, pride.

But I think we've lost a lot of that. Forget about the fact that country clubs can barely keep their dress codes enforced without armed security, and going to Church in flip flops is par for the course, the trickle down effect is further reaching. These days everything is one big LOL, shortened bit.ly text that doesn't need to have words spelled correctly in the first place, grammar, well, forget it, and just checking yourself in the mirror front and back, or looking over your work for errors is positively scoffed at.

Here Is the Small Business Challenge:

But here is my question for you all: Why is it so bad, so hard, and practically seemingly so unattainable to just double check yourself and your work? Today I spent an insane, I mean HOURS, checking people's work. Work that I thought, idiot me!, they had checked themselves. I mean, they are getting paid by the hour, so surely you can use some of that clock in and out time to read the words and numbers you put out, no? But why is it so hard to do? Really, I do want to know the answer. Why is it evidently so, so hard? And why am I the ogre for clearly spelling out expectations: proper grammar, spelling, punctuation and double checking (important in my line of work), gladly paying to have stated expectations met, and then when they aren't, it's just a "Whoops." I literally hate that word, "Whoops."

What if I were the ob/gyn delivering your baby didn't double check to make sure she cut the cord all the way and just said, "Whoops?" Clearly, I'm exaggerating, but why do those of us who actually try to put out a good product feel like such nags all the time and like we're begging just to get things right? Not great, just right. Today I caught wrong phone numbers on my own material, words fused together as if a space bar was jammed, "and" where an "&" was just a line above it and links that well, just didn't go anywhere. Whoops! Heads up, I don't want it fixed, I just don't want it to come to me wrong in the first place. And am I perfect? Absolutely not. In fact, I've reread this post a ton of times, and I'm sure I still missed something. Really, though, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about a once in a blue moon ";" instead of a ",". I'm talking about the whole laissez-faire, it's just not a big deal to have things RIDDLED with errors.

For English Teachers Everywhere:

Maybe it's just the fact that my mother drilled into my head that pride does matter, as does a sense of urgency, spelling and grammar. So I hope every single English teacher takes this blog post and pins it up to the walls of their classrooms because their jobs are so important and totally unappreciated. With all of the spellchecks, Dictionary.coms, auto-correct and speak to voice to text to cell to whatever, we still can't clearly communicate. We still can't repeat a customer's name back to them to make sure it's spelled correctly, or that the phone number, with area code! is what we thought we heard. For the record, I have fired, FIRED, 3 people/organizations who support us in the last three weeks for spelling, typos and grammatical errors because I just don't want to live with sloppy anymore. No matter how acceptable it all is to the rest of the world, I'm going to try and rid the world of cappuccino spelled "cappucino" and Marley spelled "Marly" if it kills me. And after today, it might.

Let the hate mail flow, because I'm sure to get an earful.

M

PS - If you want to know where the #Day6 #YourTurn deal comes from, hop over here. Nighty night.

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