Ask yourselves; are you ok with mediocre service, or are we just used to it?

BY STEVEN KASZAB

Have you ever made an appointment at the doctors, or for some service to be done to your furnace or a piece of equipment at your factory? Similarities abound in the sense that the service employee, or doctor will be late. You are expected to be on time, but say you sign in at the doctors at 9:00 am, you will see the doctor 45-60 minutes later. The service employee is given a free hand to arrive between 9am – 6pm the day of the appointment. They are certainly not prompt.

Now look at our politicians and how they act. Once in power they never return your calls or respond to emails. That is until the next election. The public can demand many things from our service providers, the healthcare system, or those in political power. What do we want?

• Acknowledgement
• Their undivided attention
• Transparency in all they do for us
• Accountability both personal and as an organization for all they have done “for us”

The service provider, an employee like most of us, is driven to carry out more than one job at a time, so we can understand with everything that is happening today that a broad time span may be needed for these working-class folk. Even our doctors are challenged by the very fact that they are a dying race, a species both aged and over worked unless you’re a specialist. Have you ever tried to make an appointment with a specialist? Looking at anywhere from six months to a year plus just to meet them for the first time. Normal family doctors are retiring, or leaving the field because of mental health issues, or financial ambitions. You can understand that once only a few doctors are left, they should become more precious and get paid more, right? Not in Ontario.

Politicians? A special group of people. They will tell you they enter their field to serve the community and country. Once in office they spend all their time preparing for returning to the private field. They work, acquiring influence, contacts and wealth while “serving us” and once they leave public service, they center themselves upon their lobbyist ambitions. Politicians don’t go away; they stay and suck the public and private dry. Accountability is something we cannot even get from those who are supposed to be protecting us, the police, so don’t expect politicians to be: honest, straight forward, empathetic to the public’s needs. A politician is a servant not to the crown or state, but to the corporate world, which promises them lucrative employment later in life.

“The price of excellence is discipline. The cost of mediocrity is disappointment” (William Ward)

So, are you feeling disappointed? Has our economic and political system satisfied us, or financially and mentally drained us? Albert Einstein once said, “Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.” Is the leadership of your nation, or region treating you as opposition? Do they actually listen to you? Mediocrity has grown globally just as: fatalism, ignorance, misleading information and brutality have taken over our media screens and radio’s. Fake news has become a logo, calling card and social icon.

Ask yourselves, are you ok with mediocre service from just about everyone who is serving you, be it the: overworked laborer, or technician or the overpaid political representative who hides in the shadows only until an election comes?

When I order a coffee, I expect to get a good, hot and accurately made product. You get what you pay for right? So, we have been paying top dollar like forever and it seems all we are ever provided is below average mediocrity. Smarten up or ship out.