Gilligan's Island Taught Me Not To Beat The Job

"Can I bring you anything else?"
"No, I'm fine."
The waiter pulls out the processed bill, lays in on the table and says, "I'll take that whenever you're ready."

The strange thing about that statement is that according to my waiter, I am ready now. In fact, they made that decision for me before they approached my table. Despite the denotation of the statement, the real meaning behind the statement is, "as your waiter, I am done."

The peculiar part about this is the attitude. There is a strange cheeriness to the notion that the waiter is helping you along. They act like they are doing you a favor. When in reality, because I rarely visit restaurants during peak time, I notice that the waiters hastily return to talking to co-workers or looking at their cell phones. Instead of them doing their jobs, I notice there is more of an inclination to try to beat their job. More specifically, instead of "waiting" on the table (which means waiting on you) they hurriedly take your order, bring you food, take the plates, bring you the check, so they can do nothing.

Beating the jobs is necessary sometimes. For many years, I worked in a warehouse. It was grueling work and it was expected that every order that came in that day was filled and shipped the same day. We were trained to treat it like a daily assembly line of seeing every order through to its completion every time. The reason we did this was because the product had a short shelf life and the competition was high. Plus the profit margin was low thus it was important to sell in large quantities. In this example, beating the job was the only way to do the job because we did not go home until it was done.

Most jobs are not like this. Yet too often I notice this occurs more and more in stores that I visit. There is not an inclination by store clerks to find you the right shirt, right phone, or right type of paint. The inclination is to get you to the register quicker. The same goes for customer service over the phone for banks or insurance companies. The rule is to not solve your problem. The rule is to get you to buy something else in addition to what you have already.

I am not against quick in general. However I wish that every company would not use McDonalds' drive-thru window at lunch time as a business model. I wish there was more value placed in taking time to finish a job well, as opposed to finishing it quickly regardless of its quality.

Sometimes I wonder if it is just age. Am I at that point in life, when all reflections of the past are preferable to all the possibilities of the future? I hope not. I do not want to be one of those people that starts every sentence with, "I remember when..." However, this does remind me of how many hours I spent watching "Gilligan's Island" when it was syndicated in the afternoons after school. I remember feeling transfixed by the whole show: the gorgeous island, the costume colors, the ridiculous characters and implausible story lines. I also learned a great deal from the show: money can not buy you happiness, but can get you pretty close; even in the most dire of circumstances, people of different backgrounds can work together to stay alive; and no problem is too hard to solve, except getting off a deserted island.

The most important thing I learned from watching Gilligan's Island was the following nugget of wisdom. When Gilligan was rushing to accomplish something, the Skipper scolded him with the words, "hurried work is worried work." What I think Skipper meant by this was, (1) hurrying is the physical expression of worrying and, (2) it is the worry that will prevent you from concentrating on the job and finishing it well.  And these are the words I wish to say to every waiter, every store clerk, every employee who believes the only way to finish something is quickly.

Unfortunately though, I do not have a million dollars or movie-star charm to persuade them. Or a skipper's hat to hit them on the head with. Or a doctorate in every academic field to quickly quantify the benefit. All I have are pearls of wisdom from a silly sitcom from the 1960's, this blog and this final thought:

May you work in peace.