By Roy S. Johnson
If I was lazy, doing the bare minimum, or didn’t care about the words I wrote or those among you who might read, ponder, and digest them, you wouldn’t be reading this right now.
If you were lazy, doing the bare minimum on your job, or didn’t care about your performance, you wouldn’t have yours either.
If you were a lazy entrepreneur, doing the bare minimum, or didn’t care about your products or the potential customers who walk through your door (or click on your website), your business would fail.
If you were lazy about working out, doing the bare minimum, or didn’t care about your health or your body, you might as well go to McDonald’s instead of the gym.
If you were lazy about what you eat, doing the bare minimum about nutrition, or didn’t care what you feed your body, I pray your health and life insurance policies are up to date.
If were a lazy contractor, doing the bare minimum on repair, renovation, or construction gigs, or didn’t care about the quality of your work, word of mouth will shout you into oblivion.
If your doctor was lazy, doing the bare minimum, or didn’t care about your wellness, you’d find another doctor faster than you could say, ah.
If your sitter was lazy, doing the bare minimum when you left your children in their care or didn’t care about them, you’d, at minimum, delete their number.
So…
If someone entrusted to help educate your child, keep them safe from 8 am until 3 pm (often beyond), and pour life into them was lazy, doing the bare minimum, or didn’t care about them, you’d march right down to their school and be in somebody’s face before the end of the first period.
At minimum.
If you were shocked or enraged at Mayor Randall Woodfin’s remarks regarding Birmingham City Schools’ latest report card grade – calling for teachers who are lazy, doing the bare minimum, or don’t care to “Please resign… We don’t want you.” – I hope you are equally shocked and enraged at the grade: C, a one-letter improvement from the prior year’s grade, but far from celebration-worthy.
Our children simply cannot afford to be average. We never could. We had to be better than – and Cs just didn’t cut it. Not in my childhood home, nor in a village where the message was reinforced by adults at church, at the barber shop, and throughout our neighborhood.
Reinforced before and after school.
You can be better than. You must.
