I can blame it on Persig, that jerk who wrote Zen & The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Like the garden of Eden, I used to cavort mindlessly, carefree. I had issues with wonder, but I tried to repress it. Idle thoughts, really, like fixating on the meaning of words. Once I spent 2 weeks in a stupor when I finally figured out when it REALLY mean to 'want'. So this was a pre-existing condition- I'll admit that freely. But this book of Persig's really stuck in my mental craw.
Stupid quality. Quality? Quality. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid quality. There. I feel better. I am sure Plato did that after getting his perfect circle out of his head, or Newton, after he recovered from the mental collapse brought on by the universal laws of gravitation (yes, Isaac learned firsthand that gravity is a harsh mistress). Maybe it gives me a chance to laugh about the fact that I went from being totally unobservant to its painful inverse after this book. Without any increase in wisdom. Just watching the wonder of a wider screen.
So it started with the whole idea of 'what is quality?' Its easy enough. I've seen quality before. Good food, great art, music. Something. But they are all different. In fact quality is simplicity, complexity, synchronicity, or all or none of those things depending on what's being discussed. It just seems to depend totally from case to case what makes something an item of true quality. Maybe its really just giving a damn. Doing more than just the minimum work required, even if it doesn't show in the end product. Maybe that's quality.
So that's why quality control seemed like such an oxymoron. I know a little about quality control in a manufacturing environment. It makes sense there: parts need to come out a certain way or they do not fit during assembly. These ISO/QS9000 standards in manufacturing define consistent manufacturing process to the level of a living, tediously boring document. But how do you control quality? Perhaps I am just the oxygenated moron, but I always thought about quality being akin to excellence. The highest example. The highest is a relative problem, I understand that. It changes depending on your view. Call it parallax. I get that part of the lacuna, but can you control quality?
So going back to manufacturing, I thought about this anew. A product could not possibly be the best example of excellence if nothing fit together. Who would want a car like that? I've had one. Trust me. GO ISO! All right, so ISO has a place. Consistent manufacturing helps keep bolts out of the Cherrios box. My teeth can appreciate that. And then it would make sense then that if a company could deep fry a million chickenesque nuggets of some kind and distribute them evenly around the world, it would be a great example of quality control. Except I think I just used chicken nuggets and quality in the same sentence. That is really disturbing.
I know its just fo0d. But I thought I understood quality. Actually, first I had no idea at all what it was, then it was a convulsive loop of knowing and unknowing. Concentric circles of foolishness brought on by sensible examples of everything. Maybe food isn't the best example, but it is disturbing because of the homogenity that is made sublime through quality control. Suddenly I am having suburban flashbacks. Burbs sub-divided into micelles of homogenous housing. Similar lawns, siding, kids playing. People who live there know the houses by the names architects gave them... The Manchester, The Barrister, The Pennitant. Dogs of similar pedigree are led past these homes by people with the same logos on their shoes, heading back to one of 4 possible floor plans to enjoy a meal of chicken meat, stamped into a die, then fried.
Housing makes me think it could be a good example. These floor plans offer consistency and improved quality, presumably because the kinks of making these houses get worked out as hundreds are put up. Quality is better. But hundreds is really a small number. Manufactured, stick-built houses... now there's volume. There could be a couple thousand of those. They are made inside. There's a guy with a slide rule and a pocket protector making sure the screws went in the right depth. Now that's quality. But... what if you put wheels on it? And called it a double wide? There are far more mobile homes made than custom or manufactured homes. The best opportunity for quality control happens there, probably with the single wide trailer. And curiously, they are grouped in clusters of similar homes- trailer parks. Perhaps its moomoo's walking pit bulls instead of soccer moms walking retrievers, but its close.
So quality control is eating nuggets in a trailer. Quality? That is quality? No, of course not. I guess I've coming to the conclusion that quality perhaps, like lightening, cannot be controlled. It just happens. You give a damn for something, but can you for everything? And quality control can keep a mouse out of my Pepsi bottle, but it can't make a better Pepsi. I always thought the true nature of quality was to chase the infinitely perfect up and up and up concentrically inane or insane circles.
The problem is one of mass delusion: people believe they are all entitled to quality. If it exists for everyone, then is it really quality after all?
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