A table fable
How do we know when to stop doing a thing that isn't working? And how can we tell what would make it better?
A few years ago, at the height of pandemic living when so much was being ordered online and delivered one way or another, my family decided we needed a new coffee table. After much hunting for something that would work — a round wooden top with three wooden legs — we made an online purchase and waited for delivery.
The table arrived lightly packaged in a cardboard box with minimal to no padding around the edges. As you might expect, the tabletop edge was damaged (and the cardboard box), apparently because it was set too forcefully, or even dropped, on its side. We photographed it and complained, and the company we ordered it from said not to bother sending it back, and they’d send a new one straight away.
When the new table arrived, the company again included new table legs, and again the tabletop was damaged in a similar fashion, and so was the box.
This cycle repeated for what seemed like a rather long time. We received damaged tables with legs that were totally fine. We accumulated tables. They were in decent shape except for one spot of edge damage. We wondered at this bizarre problem — the evident inability to deliver an intact table. How long would this continue?
Sometimes it looked like the edge damage was maybe happening at the last moment, like upon delivery on our porch — maybe an afterthought, a last step of “here you go” after care had been taken the whole way through, or no other situation where you’d plunk the thing down. But other times the tabletop was set on one side upon delivery and the damage was in another spot.
No matter, we were paying for a table and we wanted one that wasn’t damaged. Could a non-damaged table be delivered? Apparently not, as we collected and stored an increasing number of tables.
Eventually the company we ordered from, while sending a new tabletop, opted not to send us the legs. We received the new tabletop on its own — we’d have to use the previously received legs or make our own if we were busy assembling and using tables. It seemed fair. But, sadly, this tabletop was also damaged on the edge. In just one spot.
Finally, the next tabletop after that arrived in fine a still damaged form. It seemed like an aberration, a stroke of luck, that it was unhurt. *Edit: After speaking with my spouse about this, I have to correct myself: we never did get an undamaged table. Instead, the company opted to refund us, and gave up.
In the meantime, we had indeed been assembling and using slightly damaged tables. We had a couple of them throughout the house at this point. Some were still boxed because you can only use so many coffee tables at once. We gave them to our kids as they set up their own living arrangements. We sold one for cheap to a friend. We still have a slightly damaged tabletop sitting unused that just needs legs.
The company making and delivering these tables somehow found it more sensible, more practical to continue sending us several tables for the price of one. The process had a flaw in it somewhere that seemed impossible to control or fix.
It came down to how a person handled the delivery, and no particular policy or set of written rules could safeguard the tabletop from damage. This is in itself pretty interesting. And then the company’s approach to it — just send another one, the same way, and watch the same thing happen repeatedly — was also kind of amazing.
We do waste time, energy and resources on doing things that seem like they should work, but maybe something along the line doesn’t quite, and yet we continue, and we may do so at a loss even when our efforts hold promise and look like they have all the needed parts to work right.
But something breaks or doesn’t connect along the line. It can be hard to know where and how. It might relate to how people behave. After all, people can be unpredictable and are influenced by a lot of things. We break stuff easily, including how we treat other people, or ideas that might be delicate and need fostering, or projects and plans that aren’t as robust as the other stuff that’s been done over and over for decades.
But also, I’m guessing, it’s really hard to design processes or safeguards at a certain scale that prevent problems like this from happening. Like better packaging — what would it take for that tabletop to get a sturdier home to travel in, so that if it sees a little rough handling it doesn’t get a dent in its side? People and ideas are not so different — how can things be more robust, more resilient, better thought-through?
This relates to ways we think about how people operate, how they think, or use products or consume news or talk with each other. It connects to our ideas about what people need in their daily lives or how they’ll pick up or put down their phones.
If our assumptions remain static, and we don’t ask questions, or look into how the things really work and what it means from the beginning all the way to the end point of reaching an individual, do we really know anything at all about success?
When it comes to the news media: What are we doing over and over again that isn’t really quite working, but we operate at a loss anyway?