• Trust is integral for businesses •The honorable path Trust is integral for businesses Trust. Shouldn’t it be an integral part of our relationship with retailers/manufacturers/the supply chain? Not so much these days, it seems to me. We seem to
• Trust is integral for businesses
•The honorable path
Trust is integral for businesses
Trust. Shouldn’t it be an integral part of our relationship with retailers/manufacturers/the supply chain? Not so much these days, it seems to me.
We seem to live in a profit-driven world where our trust in the system to provide quality products is becoming seriously undermined. The “supply chain” continually downgrades many of the things we buy, at ever-increasing prices to us, while relying on the trust earned from their quality products made in the past. Here are a couple of personal experiences that, I’m sure, many of you have suffered as well.
The brakes on my truck were wearing out. They made awful, metal-to-metal scraping sounds and I was beginning to worry about safety. So I took them for an estimate to the folks who sell refrigerators in Lihu‘e.
Suspecting a seriously damaged and worn brake system, I was ready and willing to pay a high price to get them repaired. As I stood waiting for their report, the high-school-looking estimator approached me, and like a dog smelling fear in its prey, unleashed a vicious attack on my bank account.
Undeterred, I was still ready to pay, until the estimator asked a fellow employee for the definition of a brake-rotor. With deep suspicion, I returned the checkbook to its pocket and drove the truck to Steve’s place in Port Allen.
Turns out, not everything about my brakes needed replacing and I didn’t need all those expensive parts and services to return my truck to a safe operating condition. Thanks Steve, for saving me hundreds of dollars.
Speaking of refrigerators, I purchased an inexpensive model from the same folks in Lihu‘e who also sell brake-repair services. It’s about five or seven years old now, and it seems to keep our food cold and safe to eat, but it’s corroding quicker than a chameleon can match the color of its surroundings.
At first I thought it was grime building up under the door-handle, but it wouldn’t clean off. Then I realized that it was rust. So, off I go to the same store looking for another refrigerator. I told the salesperson about the rust and she asked: “Have you been waxing it?”
Well, that’s a horrible insult to inflict on a loyal customer, by blaming me for not taking proper care. As a boy growing up on O‘ahu, I lived with my parents and their one-and-only, basic-type refrigerator for almost 20 years. Nobody ever waxed that one and it didn’t rust.
How come the one I have now needs waxing? I have a suspicion about that. I believe that during manufacture, it’s no longer cost-effective to use the quality of metal-alloy found in the refrigerator that my mother had, and it’s also no longer cost-effective to prepare that alloy with corrosion-preventive coatings prior to painting.
Do you suppose that those cost-saving shortcuts resulted in a lower price for us? I now trust them to blame me with a frivolous excuse about care rather than being truthful about quality.
Like my refrigerator, my trust in those folks has corroded to almost nothing, leaving me in doubt about the honesty of their claims and quality of their products. Thankfully, I feel safer knowing that I can trust Steve for a truthful assessment about automobile repair, but I’m still wondering where I can find a refrigerator that will last as long as the one I remember as a boy.
Joe Lindo, Lawa‘i
The honorable path
I know the discussion about the bike path placement would not be happening to dig eight-foot deep bike path support posts across a Christian cemetery like St. Catherine’s, nor disturb a veteran’s cemetery like Punchbowl, so where’s the morality in doing so across Wailua beach, where hundreds of years old chants and actual experience mark the place as anciently sacred burial grounds of Hawaiian ancestors? (“Mayor bucks OHA recommendation,” The Garden Island, Nov. 24),
I then ask, why on earth do we need a path there anyway? What players behind the scenes are driving such a decision contrary to the long term good of our community and long-term respect of a sacred land?
The mayor’s position reminds me of Gov. Lingle telling the citizens how badly we needed the convenience of the Superferry, not caring what damage it could do.
Mr. Mayor, strike 1: The path’s not truly needed on the beach. Strike 2: It defiles sacred, high density burial grounds present hundreds of years before you or I. Strike 3: The ancients spoke their displeasure in the huge island-wide flooding generated “coincidentally” the last 30 minutes of a 24-hour Hawaiian chanting and prayer vigil at Wailua, which you attended, briefly.
Do you believe spirit enough to listen or are you set on a Lingle-Superferry path of blindness? There is a win-win option that begs more review. Together we can, mayor, means consensus from those people making up all that “together.” Please demonstrate the honorable “path.”
John Tyler Cragg, Wailua Homesteads
