Wednesday, October 12, 2005

Frustration is a dish best served luke warm


I've never had much use for trust.

I'm not a naturally trusting person since most if not all of the people I've ever known have exhibited a perfectly timed and precisely executed capacity to let me down at the most inopportune moments.


Notice that last word? Plural, not singular.

So I just don't trust people because by and large, they rarely deserve it and do little to earn it.

I've always had to be self sufficient and do things for myself. But being a bloke, I'm quick to seize the opportunity to rest my head and put my feet up and let others do the work from time to time.

Some might see that as a contradiction; surely that would require trust? Not entirely. Some people are often duty-bound and / or paid to do these things. Trust, it seems, has a price.

However, those days seem to be gone.

As a business owner, you learn to not rely on people because the vast majority of the people you will deal with are not very good at their job.

If you're in any doubt about this, then you've obviously not read my various missives on the subject of rank idiocy and plain common-or-garden variety daftness exhibited by the various businesses I've put my money into the hands of over the years.

Over this past six months, I've found that there is nowhere to run to escape.

Almost half of my working week is spent doing the jobs of the people I pay to do the kinds of jobs that I should be able to just delegate and be sure and safe in the knowledge that said job gets done.

Suffice to say, said job doesn't get done because of the numpties doing them in the first place.

I liken these people to those toy robots that just walk in a straight line.

Should their straight-line path become uneven, they fall over, legs flailing.

Should they walk into a wall, they don't have the sense to turn either left or right, they just continue to walk into the wall.

At some point, the law of averages sort of dictates that I should meet someone or some business that can do that one thing that I entrust them to do without the need for me to call them every day to make sure they're doing what I asked them to, or for me to actually travel through and sit their with them while they do the thing.

Indecision rules and is final. Verbal briefs are a swear word. Deadlines are a waste of time.

So what have I learned?

A job done well is a job done yourself...

4 Comments:

Blogger LiVEwiRe said...

The law of averages is full of holes, Wayne. I think you've seen that thus far. I do wish you the best and for anyone that has trust issues of any kind (present company included), I think we all have some amount of hope, somewhere, that one day we could rely on another, even if just a little. I don't hold my breath, but the feeling is down there nonetheless.

2:44 pm  
Blogger Wayne Smallman said...

Thanks for that.

It's not like it gets me down, or anything.

I like to think of myself as an optimistic pessimist; expect the worst of everyone and you'll always be pleasantly surprised on those rare occasion that people find it in themselves to do the right thing by you once in a while...

3:04 pm  
Blogger Shirley said...

Very few people have a good work ethic anymore. And sadly, I think the quality of education has dropped over the past few decades. When you stir into this a bunch of people who have been taught that the most important thing they have going for them is self-esteem, even if there's no basis for it, you get a large group of people who either don't want to work hard, or are incapable of it.

I'll never be a business owner, unless it's a one-person operation.

5:51 pm  
Blogger Katie said...

Hi wayne, I think that trust sometimes can be hard for people to grasp the meaning of and this is where you get problems. I mean take the last Friday for instance, my work colleague caught me trying to find something for our exhibition, and she took it wrongly because she thought she didn't trust me as the draw I was looking was supposed to be locked.

It was a misunderstanding and a untrustworthy situation. I should have looked elsewhere though for what I was looking for but quickly stopped the argument from going any further.

11:15 pm  

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