Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Once Upon A Time...

Written in response to a fable by one bar1scorpio

***

Once upon a time, there was a very good restaurant which had hired a new waiter. The waiter was not a very good waiter. In fact, he was a very bad waiter. He was rude to the customers. He trash-talked his co-workers. He even spat in the food on occasion. The only person the waiter showed any respect for was the owner, who paid his paychecks and made the schedule and thought the waiter was a good, hard-working employee.

For many years, this waiter kept his job. He drove many customers away. Several other waiters quit because of the bad waiter. But for all this time, the bad waiter kept his job.

Some thought "It wouldn't do any good to complain." They thought that if the waiter were really that bad, they would have been fired a long time ago. Others thought "There are other restaurants out there." They thought that they might find what they had lost elsewhere. And while they did find other meals, they still thought of the old restaurant and how it used to be before the bad waiter.

But with all of these thoughts, not one of them thought "I should say something to the owner." Not one of them thought "I should make a complaint. Not one of them thought "I should say that this is unacceptable and this must change."

And they didn't change. Because nobody thought to say that a waiter was bad.

***

The moral of the story? Well, I think Dr. Seuss put it best in The Lorax.

"Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not."

3 comments:

  1. Here I am thinking you're making a Judd Winick analogy . . . :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. For once, no.
    This was my responding to someone who apparently doesn't understand the difference between whining for the sake of whining and constructive criticism.

    ReplyDelete
  3. You are teh awesome :D
    What a great counter! :)

    ReplyDelete