One Bad Apple (Don’t Spoil the Whole Bunch)

I know this will date me, and perhaps raise a few eye brows, but I once saw the Osmond Brothers live, in concert. And I enjoyed it. (I was only about 10 years old, and it was the first “rock” concert I ever attended.) Their hit song at the time was One Bad Apple.

As Donnie so eloquently sang, “One bad apple don’t spoil the whole bunch girl.” (Lest I be accused of some kind of sexism, the same applies to boys. But I doubt Donnie would have had thousands of young girls screaming his name if he sounded like he was singing to another boy.)

I don’t generally look to Donnie Osmond for intellectual inspiration, but there is truth in those words. Simply because one apple is bad doesn’t tell us anything about the other apples in the bunch. Tossing them all out is potentially a waste of a lot of apples.

You may wonder what this has to do with painting. Since you asked I will tell you.

Many painting contractors like to categorize an entire group of people by the actions of a few members of that group. For example, they declare that lawyers are bad customers, or Asians hire only on price. In effect, they declare the whole bunch bad because of one (or maybe several) rotten apple. They are wasting a lot of apples that aren’t rotten.

Sure, you could “save” a lot of time by tossing out the whole bunch of apples. You wouldn’t have to go through them and identify which are good and which aren’t. If you toss them all, you won’t have to go through this effort. But how will you make a pie? You’ll have to go to the store and buy another bunch of apples. That takes time and money, so how much are you really saving?

Certainly some customers are rotten. But there are also some rotten contractors. We don’t like it when customers make blanket judgments about contractors, and it’s no better when contractors do it to customers.

© BEP Enterprises Incorporated 2008