RELIABILITY.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 120, 23 May 1928, Page 11

RELIABILITY.

What a reflection upon the average person that we regard reliability with grateful astonishment instead of taking it as a matter of course! In a world where we all did as we should, where no one is late, untruthful, grumbling or self-pitying, no one would notice or esteem it a virtue to be reliable, because the contrary would be unthinkable.

This world being what it is and so few people apparently brought up to keep their word absolutely, in small things as in great, reliability occupies a high place in the public esteem.

The queer part is that we are so accustomed to being, vulgarly speaking, "let down," that we almost expect it. How many times have we been told by the electrician, the plumber, the man to lay the carpets, and others, that they will come at such and such an hour, and how many times we have sat, and sat and sat, raging or moaning over the loss of time, the derangement of our day's time-table, and the strain upon nerves and temper.

The dressmaker promises a frock for a certain time, and you end by dressing at the last moment in an old one. The man who takes an order for a certain thing Bays firmly, "two weeks to a day from the date of ordering, madam," and madam arranges accordingly, only to wait days and days ("He cometh not," she said), and be told in the end quite brightly that the job took longer than might be expected, or there was a rush of work and much had to be left over. A friend promises a certain important address by first post on Monday, and on Thursday you meet her and find she hid forgotten, and hopes it was not important.

Anyone with a craze for statistics might employ happy hours counting how much time is wasted in a year waiting for the unreliable, who steal valuable time, upset one's programme and lower one's belief in human nature.

Moreover, the unreliable who promise and do not perform never understand that one would rather be refused out and out and know the worst, than be soothed with fair words and left lamenting in the end. But perhaps they neither know nor care. Or perhaps they never realise that they are unreliable and would be deeply injured by such an accusation*.