Less Than the Best

I needed to send a fax from work last week. I grabbed a cover sheet from the stack and begin to complete the information on the sheet. And then I noticed the poor quality of the cover sheet. It was obviously a copy of a copy of a copy and, to make matters worse, it had been copied at an angle so that it was off-center. It had about 347 (more or less) pixely dots all over the sheet. To top it off, there was a stray pencil mark in the middle of the page (or possibly, disgustingly, a stray hair that had been copied on to the page sometime in the past).

The last time I needed to fax something a few weeks back, I had seen the same cover sheet, noticed its poor condition, used it in a hurry and then went on my way thinking that someone should place a clean cover sheet next to the fax machine. Someone should have done it. I didn't do. And nobody do it.

But last week, that fax cover sheet took on extra significance for me. Because I recognized that it wasn't just a poor quality cover sheet; that page represented our organization to outside vendors. When we fax a company a request for information, when we fax in a recommendation for someone, when we send something to another church, that cover sheet is the first thing others see. It makes a first impression and represents us as a church. And it was poor quality and it was an embarrassment.

Over the course of time, each of us on staff, myself included, had ignored the poor quality of the cover sheet and waited for someone else to make it better. We had each settled for less than the best. When I decided to address the situation, it took about 2 minutes to print a clean cover sheet, make several copies and throw out the old ones.

Later that day, in our weekly staff meeting, I challenged our staff to be pay attention to details. To not take things for granted. To try to look for ways to make things better. To not settle for less than the best.