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                        _ __ | |__ | | ___   __ _ 
                       | '_ \| '_ \| |/ _ \ / _` |
                       | |_) | | | | | (_) | (_| |
                       | .__/|_| |_|_|\___/ \__, |
                       |_|    ...2017-03-05 |___/ 

The age of incompetence
Sometimes I get the impression that the world is slowly deteriorating when it 
comes to competences, as if we are taking away the real people and replacing 
them with useless, mindless machines running a badly written program.
This is of course related to my recent experience (which is not yet finished),
but on a more general scale as well.. Was buying some paint, so I ask the guy in
the paint department about the properties of various paints, he knew nothing, he
just worked there.. I understand that it is not the fault of this person that he
does not know anything, but rather the fault of the shop, for now educating the
workers they hire, education is expensive, and, unfortunately, it is more so
than unsatisfied customers. People are slowly getting used to everything being
crap, everything being cheap bad quality, we are desensitized to incompetence,
it becomes what we expect from the world around us. You can buy a screwdriver
and it will break after a few screws, because the tip is made from normal steel.
Luckily, you can buy a more expensive "professional" tool which will last you 
the better part of a lifetime if you treat it right, still... But you won't be
able to do that forever, we become numb to the dysfunction around us, we devolve
into mindlessly accepting that such crap even exist when it never had a proper
place on this earth to begin with. The mere existence of a tool so cheap that it
can not be used properly for its task is unjustifiable and harmful to society at
large. The person responsible for such a tool coming into existence should be
dragged out back and shot. It's harmful because we often see an unrealistic 
price-tag and something happens, we gamble; It could be much better than our
expectations, in that case, we win! If it match our expectations, then we might
get a few screws out of the wall before it (and the screws) are destroyed, but
only rarely will it really disappoint, because we already have set very low
expectations, even abysmal performance will match what we know is realistic
performance from a cheap thing, and in that case, we say to ourselves, "well,
it was so cheap, and I did get almost all the screws out of the wall" and think
little more of it. But the market feels this, and floods with cheap crap, and so
much of it that there is even a well-settled marked for what I want to call
crappium, premium crap, filling the gab between an actual working product and
something that will barely take out two screws (to keep with that metaphor).
Another marked has emerged as well, ultra-crap, which is even cheaper than the
cheap crap that won't work, and it's certain to disappoint, it will rarely even
stand up to the task even once, but its unrealistic price makes puts one in awe
that it is even possible to create a physical incarnation of anything for so
little money, so even if it does not work, one is still amazed that it can even
exist! So basically, the scale goes something like this:
Ultra-Crap (TM) - Crap -- Crapium/"professional" --------------- Working product
That's also more or less the price-range. Unfortunately, sometimes the scale
is even distorted, and you have crapium products that are priced more or less
the same as real, good, durable tools, and they can be really difficult to spot,
when not even the price will reveal their evil intentions. Thing is, this slow
deterioration of tools, materials, customer service and competence is affecting
us all, and we shouldn't stand for it. Yesterday I went to buy a worklight, and
in the first place I went "Harald Nyborg", I asked a bit about their products, I
told them that I wanted to use the light for painting, and would like to know
what the CRI of the lights were.. They didn't know and it was not stated on the
box.. Alright, practical solution: Pull it out of the box and try it on.. I made
the mistake of asking first, and I was told that I couldn't, so I asked them to
please do it for me so that I could make a choice. They couldn't.. They were not
allowed to, presumably.. I'll never shop there. Even though they have some
unrealistically cheap storage-shelves that have such nice specifications which 
I'd like........................................................................

                And that's all folks.
                                                                          -- OUT