Consistency

Just about every time I run into Steve Gold­berg and Star­bucks is men­tioned, he starts talk­ing about how they sell con­sis­ten­cy instead of good cof­fee. There is a poem by Richard Brauti­gan that is par­tic­u­lar­ly tren­chant in this con­text:

Xerox Can­dy Bar

Ah,
you’re just a copy
of all the can­dy bars
I’ve ever eat­en.

So I guess anoth­er vari­able can be thrown in with the quan­ti­ty and qual­i­ty argu­ment that I had with myself a while ago. Quan­ti­ty, Qual­i­ty and now Con­sis­ten­cy. I can see no prob­lem with con­sis­ten­cy if the qual­i­ty is high, but con­sis­ten­cy at the price of qual­i­ty is a bit trou­bling. I’m pret­ty sure the root of this fool­ish con­sis­ten­cy lies with the Eli Whit­ney’s cot­ton gin, or Samuel Colt and his revolvers, or per­haps even as late as Hen­ry Ford’s assem­bly lines; and with the first man­u­fac­to­ries . I’m not aim­ing at some sort of Lud­dite anti-Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion­ism here, although any­more I have to won­der if the price is worth it.

Instead I’m try­ing to say that we’ve become accus­tomed to con­sis­ten­cy and com­fort­ed by it. We’d rather have the same burnt cup of cof­fee and the same depart­ment store lay­out each place we vis­it instead of tak­ing the risk of being star­tled by changes in the qual­i­ty of the prod­uct. I guess it is no sur­prise at the world-list­less­ness of many folks if you think of it in these terms. If you eat the same feed every day it is no sur­prise you start think­ing like a cow.

4 thoughts on “Consistency”

  1. I was at Play It Again, Sam in Lake­wood yes­ter­day and the pro­pri­etor showed me a record play­er that had been invent­ed by an audio­phile who also hap­pened to engi­neer pre­ci­sion laser cut­ting equip­ment. Instead of using the same basic design that every oth­er phono­graph uses, this guy had made an instru­ment that had extreme­ly high fideli­ty, a hydraulic nee­dle guide to avoid even the slight­est record scratch­ing, an off­set spin­dle weight to keep the record from even the slight­est wob­ble, a twist­ed belt and pul­ley sys­tem to keep the belt from rat­tling and sound damp­ened and sep­a­rat­ed equip­ment to avoid even the slight­est mod­u­la­tion on the audio out­put. He tru­ly invent­ed a bet­ter mouse­trap. I won­der what oth­er things could be improved yet haven’t been because “good enough” is enough.

    Hope your car is func­tion­al again.

  2. Shalom Adam,

    I’m remind­ed of my brief forey into the world of espres­so machine repair this sum­mer. There is no stan­dard­iza­tion among machines. While they all oper­ate on the same prin­ci­ples, the way each design­er approach­es and uti­lizes those prin­ci­ples is dif­fer­ent. It makes for a mad­den­ing­ly com­plex chal­lenge when order­ing parts.

    Or take the case of my 1990 Toy­ota Cam­ry. A few weeks ago I replaced a CV axle and had to also replace the seal between the axle and the trans­mis­sion. My mechan­ic went nuts try­ing to find the $5 seal. Toy­ota put four dif­fer­ent trans­mis­sions on that par­tic­u­lar 4‑cylinder engine and each seal was a lit­tle dif­fer­ent. Add to that that the com­pa­ny used mul­ti­ple sources for the seals, even on the iden­ti­cal trans­mis­sion.

    The end result was sev­er­al gal­lons of trans­mis­sion flu­id on the ground while the mechan­ic tried seal after seal.

    On a car, con­sis­tan­cy is a good thing. On an espres­so machine, per­haps not so good. On women, its always bad.

    B’shalom,

    Jeff

  4. Hey Adam,

    I find con­sis­ten­cy prob­lem­at­ic, even when the qual­i­ty is high. There’s been lit­tle evi­dence shown to me that any­thing (man-made) exists that can’t be improved. There’s also been lit­tle evi­dence that con­sis­ten­cy is any­thing more than a breed­ing ground for stag­nan­cy. Beyond these points, the cost of stag­nan­cy in a world full of peo­ple who have wild­ly vary­ing stan­dards for “high qual­i­ty,” is noth­ing short of injus­tice. 😀 Hope all is well.

Comments are closed.