“Quality, what exactly does that mean today?”
Now with that kind of question this blog could go any number of directions but for the purpose of holding your attention here, I’ll make it short and sweet!
Have you noticed that our society as a whole tends to first look for the ‘cheap deal’? You search up an item on Amazon.com and immediately scan the page to find the least expensive seller of that item! It’s nice that they include the ratings for sellers, which may influence your choice, but really the main point is to get to the bottom barrel price! I’m all for finding a good bargain, but I’m really trying to dig deeper here and reveal something that could be considered an underlying problem…
Walk into Home Depot and I will personally guarantee you that if you were to grab 10 items off the shelf in that store, 8 or 9 of those items will be made in China. I have personally experienced the quality levels in tools and materials dropping even over the past handful of years. I recently purchased a hand scrapper to clean off a concrete floor and the scraper blade began to chip within an hour of use, and the handle broke within several hours! Check the lumber material at these big box stores and yikes! Some 2x4s look like hockey sticks…as a matter of fact, I make it a firm procedural habit to request a minimum 10% off at the cashier due to the lacking quality of the material sometimes. You have to dig and dig through the bins sometimes just to find the good stuff!
What’s my point? It’s simple:
We’ve been told , (insert straining voice here) “You have to pay the price for quality.” As if it’s some sort of painful, laborious process to suffer through… Let me bring some perspective to it in closing.
If you want good health, you don’t eat McDonald’s Dollar Value Menu items, nope that’s not the way. But you don’t “pay the price (again straining voice here)!” for good health do you? No, you thoroughly enjoy the price of a good clean bill of health! (Oh and your family and loved ones do too!)
If you want to have growing and healthy relationships with your son or daughter (if applicable to you!) You don’t have to pay the price to choose to leave your job early, or drive that extra 15 minutes, or wake up an extra half hour just to make their Saturday game. No my friend, you thoroughly ENJOY the Price of a good relationship with your loved ones. It always made me feel good to see my parents concerned with QUALITY time they spent with me and my siblings.
So to tie it all together here, when it comes down to selecting the right contractor for your job…folks there are many, many “Dollar Value Menu” outfits out there. You know as well as I know that you won’t be ENJOYING the price a few months or a year down the road. The enjoyment comes from a job well done, resources well spent, and lasting relationships well built.
In retrospect I experienced it buying the cheapo hand tool at the Home Depot. I’ve experienced it with the “gut bomb” McChicken just 15 minutes after I ate it… and I’ve realized that for the good things in this life, you can choose to see the long term benefits of not Paying the Price for Quality, but Enjoying it.
