Common sense seems to be a lost art.
In two previous posts I blogged about United Airlines and my local bank. In both instances, it can be said, the basic problem was a lack of common sense.
In the United post, musician Dave Carroll had his Taylor guitar broken by UAL baggage handlers. After repeated requests for help, he told United if they didn’t take appropriate action, he’d write a song about his experience. They didn’t and he did.
Were I the United rep, learning that Carroll was about to write a song about his bad experience, I would have said, “Mr. Carroll, we’d rather you write a song about how we made things better rather than worse. We’ll be glad to do the right thing.”
At my bank, the focus was on what was easiest for “the bank”, not “the customer.”
Were I the supervisor or teller, I would have refocused on what’s easiest for the customer, not the bank.
In hindsight, anyone with a modicum of common sense would have “gotten it.”
Have we become so preoccupied by complexity that we’ve forgotten the simple, common sense solutions?
Has common sense, as we once knew it, become uncommon?
Although our society has seen significant change in a number of areas, I don’t think much has changed in the area of practical application of “common” sense.
I think back to my childhood as a young boy and I can recall my mother reciting a saying she heard from her mother (my grandmother) on the island of Jamaica as a little girl.
“Common sense isn’t common”
While I have no proof, knowing the culture the way I do, I suspect that this simple little saying has been passed down a few generations.
Let’s just say for argument sake that it started with my great grandmother, that’s at least 100 years!
So I think that the art of common sense has been absent for quite some time.