Think about a world where every new thing you bought could not be fixed when it broke, could not be upgraded, or improved in any way. Only replaced.

Think of a world where you could have surgery for an issue, but were sent immediately home and left to care for you own recovery. Oh, and you had to drive yourself home.

Think of a world where you could learn anything, but could be taught nothing, because there was no one to actually teach you. But the material and information where there for you to pick up on your own.

Think of a world where you could defend yourself, fight your own fires, clean up your own spaces but there would be no one coming to help…ever..

Think of a world where everything was always expensive and new, but no services existed to ever take care of anything.

We pay people and companies a lot of money for the new hotness, not the lame oldness.

Thus, the people we pay the most in this world are the ones who develop, market and sell the new. Service people, in just about every aspect get paid less than sales, marketing or development.

We put a much higher value on bringing in new revenue.

I get this, that is how the world works. No company wants to make one of something that is so well made that it will require little upkeep and that you may never by another.

But while I also know no company wants to pay everyone top dollar to do the mundane, we have this concept so totally backward that is extends to much more critical aspects of life.

When I think of our teachers, policemen, firemen, and other key service providers I cannot see this concept being extensible.

These are people we rely upon far more critically than the horde of marketers that want us to buy the next smart phone.

Yet we have relegated most of these critical service providers to be some of the lowest wage earners. I really don’t get this. It is so backward. Furthermore, when I look at some of the workloads they take on it is often far more onerous than those who make double, triple or more.

Like I said, I get this is how the world works. However, don’t we have it backwards? How would our world change if we just balanced this a bit more equitably? We have so many who are in a service role and for the most part we remember the one thing they do wrong for us not the hundreds of times they got it right.

How easy it is to be critical to the RN who made a mistake in caring for you, yet we would not think of being critical to the doctor. How easy it is to be critical to the person trying to help you get your new widget fixed as opposed to the person who created it. How easy is it for us to be critical to the teacher trying to care for twenty students and struggling with one when the parents have one and do nothing to manage their own child, to teach them respect.

Our service personnel end up being the whipping post for all of our problems.

Our service personnel get to take care of you at your lowest, teach you when you know little, pick you up or pick up after you. For the most part any service role is a calling far more than a career.

But we know the world is backward. Just listen to the news, watch a political debate, consider the many wrongs that get committed in the guise of right.

I fear that we are slipping backward more quickly now than any other time in history.

“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.
“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”
“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.
“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland