The John Griff Column: Never mind the quality… feel the width

The word ‘Quality’ has been rolling around my head over the past couple of weeks. In a variety of times and places I’ve found myself questioning the quality of people’s work (including my own) against the compromises which are sometimes made to get a job done. How often and to what degree does quality get eroded by compromise – and what are its effects?

A couple of months ago, Lois ordered some replacement gates for the garden. They allow us to park our cars securely and keep the dogs safely contained, rather than risk them roaming near a road that can be quite busy. The previous gates had done sterling work over more than twenty years when they were installed – their quality was in no doubt, but they had deteriorated. We waited for quite a long time for the replacements to be delivered but weren’t too worried – the online videos and pictures of the manufacturer’s products being made in-house looked good. Their communication was pretty appalling and it should have rung a warning bell, but we put that down to a small business concentrating on the quality of their work.

Take a good look at the picture here – it details what finally arrived. Far from being a quality job, the received gates had joints that didn’t marry up, pieces of timber that should have fitted snugly but stood proud of each other and gaps between panels where there should have been none. What should have been smooth planed wood was, in fact, rough hewn timber almost thrown into place. You can’t quite see the half centimetre gap between the panels and the uprights behind them, but I assure you that the only thing there is air, and a few staples, tacking the wood in place. If the dogs (they’re not big) had thrown themselves against the gates when hung, I’m pretty sure that they would have collapsed. If the gates had been delivered by the makers rather than in a courier’s van, I’d have refused to accept them. Where was the quality here? How did they leave the yard? Did nobody inspect them first? Or worse still, did somebody inspect them and then decide that they WERE good enough to send out? Not only was the work shoddy, so was the attitude of the makers. Irate communication followed on the same day that delivery was made.

Luckily we’d arranged for a proper, professional tradesman to come and install the gates. Sylvester comes from mainland Europe and is a genius of a craftsman. Embarrassed by what I was handing him as a job, I apologised and asked if might be able to at least tidy up the appalling state of the gates. His single word description of them matched mine – I won’t use it here but it rhymes with ‘split’. Having arrived at 8.30 that morning, he worked until gone 7.30 that night, deconstructing the gates and then reconstructing them so that everything fitted as it should have originally done. To see his attention to detail (it seemed almost obsessive) certainly validated our decision to involve him in the first place. This artist in carpentry put right the poor imitation of quality that we had been sold and in the process guaranteed himself every job we will ever need to bring someone in for – IF he’s available. As for the original UK manufacturers – forget it. I will spare their blushes here, but they won’t ever see another penny of our money.

Possibly like the gate makers too, Sylvester is an example of a small business. He IS the business, so his name, reputation and future prospects ride on every piece of work that he does. Every business understands this, or should. Ours is an economy which relies significantly on small businesses, so why does bad workmanship ever get to the consumer, and why should we allow it to?

The Saints proved their quality under pressure and without compromise last Saturday. Just as they proved in performance, teamwork delivered the goods. Andy Burnham will need similar teamwork if he is to succeed and deliver for his consumers, the general public. Will he prove to be a quality MP or PM? The answer will lie in the finished goods that he delivers – shoddy workmanship will see us looking elsewhere – and fast.