Lazy people didn’t create databases but they’ve made ample use of them.
Anyone who deals with deadlines can relate to this. One of your duties is to submit work to another department for further processing. The deadline is within an hour and the person from that department comes to you asking where thus and such job is. You didn’t see it come in or go out and you might not have even known it was supposed to run. But. Instead of going and finding the specific item and making sure it is done you don’t even get up. You query a database and then tell them what the database says and then go back to surfing the internet or talking on your cell or whatever else you’re not being paid to do. So the next day you’re sitting in your boss’s office who is yelling at you because her boss yelled at her because her boss yelled at her because his boss, the Division VP got yelled at by the VP of another division which through a similar succession of bosses and subordinates leads to the department where you were supposed to hand off that job yesterday. The fact that you can prattle off how the system queries all say the job was complete and all the paperwork is dotted and crossed, initialed and signed in all the right places in triplicate is not going to stop you from having to sign the written warning form your boss just handed to you on a clipboard.
However the problem got to you; whether the job was completed and deleted from the system, or whether you can lay blame on some colleague who is notorious for leaving work for others, somewhere out there there’s a customer who is having to delay working and listen to protestations of apology and reassurance that she’ll have her product in the very immediate future. She doesn’t care anything about the efficiencies of your internal reporting system. She’s pissed. She wants her money back. She’d like to go take her business elsewhere but she knows that either you’re the only game in town or she’d have to start over with someone else and be that many more days away from completing her job.
That’s the example from the workplace. How many of us use the same method in dealing with our health or maintaining our houses and cars? We wait for indicator lights to tell us something is wrong or hold off getting our blood work done until we have chest pains. With the car the best example from my experience is the brakes. There have been several times when I have heard a wear indicator sound off, taken my truck to a service place and instead of hearing that the job’s done and how much it is and when I can pick it up I’m told that I have 30-40% of my brake pads left. Now we all know that the more worn out something is the more the service spot gets to charge to fix it. But let’s float the proposition that they’re being altruistic and genuinely trying to save me the cost of a repair that is as yet unnecessary. They shouldn’t get to charge me $20 or in one case $78 for pulling off wheels and taking a peek. In these two particular cases The $20 place told me I had 60% left and the dealership ($78) told me I had 40% left on the brake pads and at that point I was going metal to metal. Yes it’s a case of bad customer service. However if I had insisted that the first people fix the brakes I wouldn’t have found myself a few months out with grinding noises.
Instead of relying on others we have to get in the habit of finding things out for ourselves. If you’re being paid to know, then find out regardless of how inconvenient or difficult it is. If someone tries to get you to delay maintenance, they’re not to be trusted. Take the work to someone else. If you need to have a check-up, don’t wait until your body insists.