Good lord, what messes

I've seen a number of things (not just nationally, but locally) lately that makes me think that people either aren't trying to do a good job, or don't care who gets screwed over by missed deadlines, bad product, etc., as long as they get their paycheck.

And I find that deeply frustrating. I was raised to do the best possible job all the time - I have a really hard time doing anything in a half-assed way, even if I know I don't have time to do it right and that my "half-assed" is most likely someone else's "good enough."

It's been brought home to me, lately, though: Why do I even try? Why do I keep putting in long days and forgoing doing "fun" stuff? Why do I stress myself out over "Is the exam I wrote good enough? Does it test over the concepts the students need to know, is it too simple, is it too hard?" Because it feels more and more like no one else gives a crap how good the product they are putting out is, and if something really fails, they just shrug their shoulders and find someone else to blame.

And what this does, at least in my mind, is it continues to beat down the responsible people, the ones who care. Really: Why should I spend multiple hours doing something and making sure it's "right" when someone somewhere else just slaps something together, says, "good enough" and then goes off to watch a basketball game or something?

And yet, I can't just shrug off my duties and do a crap job at stuff because everyone else is. It kills me to do stuff half-assed, as I said earlier. What I want to see is greater accountability for the people who are doing crap jobs....to see some people genuinely get reprimanded and lose their jobs and have to make what's wrong right for no additional pay....and to stop harassing the people WHO are doing a good job and who do care.

And another thing is, sometimes there feels like a double standard. Let a high muckety-muck screw something up, even in a way that looks as if it might be intentional, and people look the other way. Let someone like me make a genuine mistake because we're ill-informed or because we honestly forget Thing 3564 of the 3565 things we're supposed to do, and OMG THE WORLD IS ENDING! And YOU ARE A HORRIBLE PERSON! And OMG HOW ***COULD*** YOU NOT DO THAT ONE THING?!?!?!


I don't know. I just get very discouraged by the way some parts of our society act these days.