A Lesson from Food Poisoning

On Sunday, I went out to dinner to celebrate my son turning 2-years-old. We went to one of our go-to restaurants that we trust, but that changed at about 9:30PM when I started vomiting.

And it didn’t stop until after 4AM the next morning.

This is the second time I’ve gotten food poisoning in the last 6 months after only ever experiencing it one other time in my life. Once from Chick-Fil-A (I still love you CFA, no hard feelings), once from a high-end restaurant in Minneapolis, and now once from a local Mexican place.

As I was hunched over the toilet in the middle of the night something occurred to me.

Most of the time food poisoning is the result of negligence in one way or another. Not cooking meat all the way through. Not cleaning ingredients properly. 

But it all comes down to someone along the line not doing the basics of their job up to the accepted standards.

My takeaway from all of this is to be a master of the basics.

When you don’t execute the basics right, other people suffer. 

Whether in a restaurant or some other business when you don’t have the basics mastered or you try to cut corners in the name of efficiency other people somewhere down the road will suffer as a result.

You may never know that what you did affected someone else adversely, but that’s a pitiful excuse for not doing the work the right way.

There are direct and indirect consequences when you don’t do what you’re supposed to. Keep that in mind this week as fatigue and frustration tempt you to cut corners.