The doorbell rang and I opened the door.
“Carpenter!” said the middle aged man holding a measuring tape. “You want to change your door?”
“Yes,” I said, “Three doors!”
I watched as he pulled out the tape and held it against the first door, then placed the same tape at the bottom, then repeated the measurements to himself.
“Why aren’t you writing it down?” I asked as he struggled to remember feet and inches or was it metres and centimeters!
“I don’t have a pen!” he said brightly.
“So how did you expect to take the measurements back to your shop?” I asked.
“I use my head!” he said.
“All three doors? Feet and inches, length and breadth?”
He looked at me sheepishly. “When I bring the doors we will adjust sir!”
I have seen such adjustments before. Workmen bringing doors which are too large or too small, masons carrying in tiles which don’t fit bathroom, furniture bought in store looking totally out of place in some one’s drawing room.
All because details have not been noted down.
A couple going to buy new furniture for their drawing room hadn’t measured their drawing room to see how big or small it was. “Oh no,” whispers the wife when the furniture arrives, “the dining table has taken all the place, where will we put the sofas?”
Or they find to fit their double bed in they’d have to break their wall and intrude into their neighbour’s flat! All this, because we do not like to involve the detail!
This happened last week again: In my bathroom there were some wires sticking out, and my electrician told me it was dangerous. “But I don’t have the same tile to cover those wires!” I said.
“No problem sir, I will put a small plastic board on it!”
He came, armed with electric drill, plastic board and four small screws.
And now for the last one week I have been staring angrily at a lopsided plastic board that grins back at me every time I use the cloak. “Hi!” it says, “How do you like my crookedness?”
Yes that’s what we should call ourselves when we don’t manage the detail, “Crooked people!”
Not because we are crooks, oh no, but that we are slightly tilted in our focus.
Straighten up! Start looking into details; you can save yourself a lot of ‘adjustments’..!
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While reading this carpenter’s story, when I came to the point when he repeats the measurements to himself, spontaneously I thought “what a tech-savvy carpenter”. I imagined the carpenter to have the voice recording on his mobile on so that he could play it back later in his workshop. But this carpenter disappointed me. From our younger days, we have seen carpenters with a pencil stuck behind the ear. Your carpenter was neither a traditional one nor a modernist.
Unfortunately no one thinks of knowledge upgradation of our artisans.
Whatever happened to…”a craftsman measures twice and cuts once”?
When carpenters, masons etc want to secure a job, they assure you the most perfect job.
If later on there are any mistakes in the work, they have long explanations or justifications.