Not My Problem

Some time ago, I made plans to go to a comedy club with a good friend of mine.

It was a Thursday night. Not quite the end of the week, but still a good time for a laugh because some of the better comedians start performing closer to the weekend.

When I got to his house, I went inside, greeted his wife, and we talked about how it had been too long since we had gotten together.

We weren't late, but you never know what traffic will be like, so we wanted to leave early enough to get a good seat.

As we walked out of the house, we said goodbye to his wife and got into my car.

He sat down, but before he closed the door, he quickly scanned his property.

"One sec."

He got out, walked to his garage, and opened the door using the keypad.

He put on a pair of work gloves and walked over to the property line.

There was a piece of garbage sitting on his neighbour's property close to his.

It had been garbage day, and I guess the collectors had been careless.

He picked it up, walked back, threw it away, put the gloves back, washed his hands, and said, "Okay, let's go."

I watched the whole thing happen.

The garbage wasn't his.

It wasn't on his property.

He didn't have to pick it up.

But He Understood Something

But he understood something.

Things that remain unattended to eventually become your problem.

I know people close to me who will remain nameless to protect the guilty who would not think twice about leaving it there.

Myself included.

But it taught me a lesson that day.

If you take care of small problems when they arise, they stop being problems.

In business, the goal is to have things run smoothly so you aren't constantly dealing with issues that could have been prevented.

It can seem easier to ignore something when it is small.

But the longer it sits there, the harder it can become to fix.

Sometimes the things we call "not my problem" are the exact things that eventually become ours.