The Tale of Three Plumbers

In my mind, professionalism is all about doing your best. It’s what separates the people who make sure that their work fully satisfies their customers from those who just get the job done (or pretend to), and run off with their paycheques.

Picture a few hypothetical characters (again): Fred, Bob and Big Tom. All of them are plumbers. All of them charge the same price per hour.

Fred is a perfectionist. He makes sure everything fits together perfectly and cleans up after his work. He has a policy of using every toilet he installs to make sure it even feels right. Whenever he is fixing something, he doesn’t just replace the damaged part, but inspects the whole system for the cause of the problem and anything else that could go wrong. He wears suspenders to avoid improper exposure.

Bob is a fast worker. He puts everything together as fast as he can, and just does a quick check to see if it works. He figures he shouldn’t waste any time since plumbers’ rates are expensive. When fixing something, he just replaces the damaged part, and avoids time-consuming troubleshooting. He does wear a belt.

Big Tom works at a snails pace, since he enjoys his hourly rate. He doesn’t care if everything fits together right. After all, if something doesn’t work, his customers can pay him for more time to fix it. When asked to fix something, he just gives the damaged part a quick patch that should last a while. He can’t bother with a belt or boxers, and enjoys excellent ventilation.

Fred is very professional. Even though he takes extra time to generate perfection, he saves time and money in the long run, since his work won’t randomly flood your house, and he solves potential disasters. Bob is also quite professional. Even though his work isn’t perfect, customers appreciate paying him for less time. Tom’s redneck relatives think he’s professional.

In mechanical engineering, we’ll have to be professional in the way Fred is, because if we’re not, we might not just be flooding someone’s house.