In A Nick of Time

 

I've noticed a trend in our society lately. It seems that out of fear of offending someone, people look the other way instead of pointing out an obvious problem or fault. I am not going to do that here. In fact, I promise to try my best to offend someone with every post I write. It's about time someone did!

Now, case in point...I was driving down Rock Springs Road today when I passed the brand new elementary school called Rock Springs Elementary School. The school was just built from the ground up over the past half-year or so, and frankly, I'd rather put up with construction trucks than school buses and 20mph zones.

Nevertheless, the school is now open and lots of little kiddies can be seen every morning as you creep along at a snail's pace.

Out in front of the school is a sign that administrators can use for road-side announcements, and given the fact that we pass the sign at only 20mph, we have plenty of time to scrutinize the sign. Do you get the feeling I am not too fond of the school zone?

So today, I glance at the sign and see that it reads "Beef O'Brady's Spirit Night" and, WHOA! What did that say? That didn't read "spirit" nope, that word is "s-p-r-i-r-t." What is a sprirt? I find myself trying to pronounce it - I'm mean, why not? It's going to take a week to get through this school zone.

Okay, so I'm trying to pronounce "sprirt." Let's see, it starts with "sp" and then a "ri" sound. Now, I'm saying "sp-ri," which by the way isn't easy, so I add the "rt" to the end. Now I'm saying "sp-ri-rt" I try it again and again, and yes, I can actually say it three times really, really fast, but it just won't come out as a word.

Finally, I gave up and started wondering who put the letters on the sign in the first place. Was it a teacher? Ugg, that's a scary thought! Was it a student? It's an elementary school so most of the students are probably too short to reach the sign, but surely they'd have to be under the supervision of a teacher. Ugg, another scary thought!

Then I started thinking about Governor Rick Scott of Florida. Last week he was pushing his plan for pay raises for teachers in public schools. Seriously? Would these be the teachers that promote a sprirt of excellence? Would these be the teachers that won't embrace a sprirt of accountability?

Let me tell you something, and I will because it's my blog, I've worked for people and I've had people work for me. I've been fired and I've had to fire people. Firing and getting fired sucks - there's no two ways around that one, however, if you’re incompetent or don’t care enough to do your job correctly, then you deserve be fired and you certainly do not deserve a raise.

The title of this post is They Shall Know You by Your Works, which for those of you who are interested comes from the bible. There are words of wisdom in that book if you bother to take the time to read it.

So what works do I see? I see a sprirt of carelessness. I see a sprirt of apathy, but worst of all, Rock Springs Elementary - do you have to broadcast your carelessness to the world?

You have to understand, road signs are one of my pet peeves. It’s like seeing a sign that reads, “Sams Used Cars.” The first thing I think is, has Sam never been introduced to an apostrophe or maybe Sam just doesn’t give a crap, and if he doesn’t give a crap, why should I think he’ll give a crap about me?

I never, under any circumstances, support a business that displays blatant carelessness to the world.

A sign announces to the world the care and quality of your work and reflects upon your own self worth. If the sign says you don't care about your work, how can we expect you to care anymore for things that are important to us?

If Rock Springs Elementary School doesn’t care enough to spell spirit correctly knowing the world will see it, what does that say about the quality of education one should expect from that school? For me, if I am going to publish a sign, I am going to take every measure to insure it is as good as I can make it. You won't find bad grammar like missing possessives or just plain atrocious spelling.

I had a high school teacher (yes, public high school) by the name of Mr. Donovan who was fond of saying, "Excuses only satisfy those who make them," so go ahead and begin ranting excuses and maybe by the time I get out of this speed zone, you'll be satisfied.

I think I offended at least four groups with this post, liberals, teacher unions, the Governor of the State of Florida, and small business owners...humpf, not bad for the first post.