Off The Cuff

Recall, Recall, Recall..When Will It Stop?

Posted by: From Arkansas in Give Me A Break, What's Wrong With This Picture? on Jul 23 2007

Welcome back!

In the last several months, we have been inundated with the word RECALL. For the most part, the items involved were from China although not all. We had the pet food scare. Then, the toothpaste thing. The toys were in there too. All from China. That should have been a real red flag, don’t you think?

Ah but that’s not the only source of the recall disease. We have car makers recalling cars ever year for one reason or another. Today, there is currently a meat recall. This comes from the Bumble Bee Seafoods LLC in San Diego. They make things that include the Castleberry label. But that was not all. They have a rather large list of product names for recall: Austex, Best Yet, Big Y, Black Rock, Bloom, Bryan, Bunker Hill, Cattle Drive, Firefighters, Food Club, Food Lion, Goldstar, Great Value, Kroger, Lowes, Meijer, Morton House, Paramount, Piggly Wiggly, Prudence, Southern Home, Steak N Shake, Thrifty Maid, Triple Bar and Value Time and four varieties of Natural Balance dog food.

As you are probably aware, I have not scratched the surface of the recalls actually going on. So, what is going on here? What is causing all of this recalling of inferior items? I can’t tell you why the individual items are being recalled other than some type of carelessness on the part of the company or employees of that company. But, in the long run, the real problem is that people do not seem to care at all what job they are doing. There is little excellence in the person’s work ethic. I have noticed that most people are just there to put in their time. They are not happy working where they are. It’s only a paycheck.

I used to work at a factory that made a safety device for a certain type of car. The line I worked in had seven people. Most of the day, we were making pleasant conversation unless we had to get the part out quickly which did not happen too often. In the morning staff meetings, we found out about parts being returned when that did occur. I was on day shift. We had a pretty good record with few returned parts. But, the night shift was having a real problem. A lot of parts returned. Why? Because the person making the part and the inspectors were not doing their jobs. That sort of lack of interest in doing a good job is a whole lot of the problem in work places.

I do believe that with that type of attitude, there will be more and more of this instead of less. I do realize that there are more checks in place to detect mistakes that we could not find in the past. But I still think that it is mostly in the hands of the person who does not care that he or she does a good job simply because it is the job they have to do and were hired to do.

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