The perils of cutting corners

Everybody cuts corners.  It seems great at the time.  Very rarely does it turn out that way.  Most of the time, we wind up doing the job again, but this time properly.  We aCut know it isn't a good idea, but we still do it.  Why?

Most of the time we cut corners to save time.  Maybe we have somewhere else to be.  We can approach the corner cutting here in one of two possible ways:  1.  "Man, I've got a pretty good handle on this. I can take this shortcut and get to the same outcome."  2. "You know, I shouldn't do this, but I'm really running short on time.  I'll just do it this way and handle the consequences later."  The first way is foolish.  Those steps are there for a reason.  Today, for instance, I was in a rush and needed to clean my car.  While stopped at a stop sign, I grabbed the Windex and paper towels on the seat next to me and started cleaning my dashboard.  I thought to myself, "Go, Johnny, go!  Way to be efficient."  Of course, dividing my time between driving and dashboard cleaning wasn't smart.  I didn't pay enough attention and wound up having the Windex bottle disconnect from the sprayer and fall onto the ground.  Now my passenger floor mat has a nice Windex puddle.  I caused some damage, and wound up still having to clean my dashboard when I got back to my apartment.  Sure this isn't a big deal, but it would be if I was a pilot who decided that he didn't need to read through his landing checklist.  "I'll just run through it in my head; I've done it a million times before."  Then you wind up landing with the landing gear up because you were talented enough to cut corners.  It happens all of the time and it just isn't worth it.  Cutting corners leads to complacency which leads to mistakes.  We're not better than procedure.

Other times we acknowledge that we aren't doing things the right way.  Take, for instance, cleaning your house for a nice summer barbecue.  You've just gotten home from work, you have to take the kids to swimming lessons.  You wake up the next day and realize, "Gadzooks!  The family will be over in three hours and it looks like a tornado came through here!"  We know where everything in our home belongs.  We know that the playing cards shouldn't be tossed to the bottom of the magazine rack.  We know that our oxfords sitting next to the couch from the night before belong in the closet and not under the couch.  But we only have THREE hours to get this place in tip-top shape.  Now we think, "I'll just find a place for this stuff now, and actually clean it all up later."  The ingenious time savers that we are have found a way to get the house looking neat and still have 45 minutes of Snood time before the first guest arrives.  But what happens two weeks from now when we want to wear those oxfords and can't find them?  Or when the boys come over for poker night and the playing cards aren't in the drawer that you've kept them in for years?  It's annoying.  It really doesn't take much longer to do the job the right way.  Why deal with it twice?

Sometimes we just don't care.  There are little jobs where corner cutting doesn't really make a big deal.  For instance, the township requires that all cardboard be broken down before being placed in the recycling bin.  You have a small box and don't feel like walking to get a knife to cut it so you just toss it in.  No big deal here, right?  Nobody gets hurt; there aren't any consequences.  This may be true, but it sets a bad precedence for yourself and those around you.  If you don't force yourself to do the job correctly the first time for everything, it will be easier to slide into a lazy mentality.  Nobody likes lazy people.  It's really not that much harder to do the job the right way.  If you do the job properly, you'll feel better about yourself, others will respect you, and you will keep that nasty complacency at bay. If you absolutely need to cut corners, cut the one on the waxy bag that your Rice Krispies come in.