I have been working at the theatre all afternoon hanging lights for “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Specifically, instead of hanging instruments I spent the afternoon repairing them for the guys on the ladders. I don’t know what it is, but people just cannot seem to handle doing the right thing when it comes to fixing things. Why do something right when you can do a hack job of it, and then have to fix it again later? Arggh!
It’s easy to say that it’s because people don’t care, that they conciously think “I’ll do just enough so that my show is good, and who cares about anyone else.” I don’t believe that. It’s more likely that they think they don’t have the time to do it right. They don’t stop and consider that it’s circular. Other people didn’t have time to do their part right, so now you have to deal with it, and because you lost time to dealing with their messes you don’t have time to fix your own.
So how do we teach people to do the right thing? Make them clean up the mess later, so they realize that if they’d done it right the first time they wouldn’t be doing extra work? Could we get them to realize that they do have time to fix things right? I’ve seen groups where doing the right thing becomes viral, but I have no idea how to get that mentality started…