The Fork in the Road
The Essential Art of Giving a Sh*t
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There’s a scene in The Muppet Movie when Kermit and Fozzie Bear are driving somewhere and they encounter a fork in the road—as in, an enormous fork literally stuck in the middle of the road. Get it? Over four decades after seeing the film, that oversized visual pun is still planted firmly in my mind.
I thought of the fork in the road a couple of weeks ago when we were staying at a beach hotel in Colombia. The property had a sublime location on a deliriously gorgeous (and blissfully quiet) stretch of sand. It could have and should have been a zinger of a stay. But something was missing. Care. Somewhere along the way (maybe on day one), the owner and staff of the hotel had simply stopped caring. They had reached that critical juncture and, for whatever reason, ceased giving a damn. You could see it in all of the physical details and you could feel it in the service. The entrance gate was twisted and tattered, our bedroom lamp was unambiguously (and annoyingly) broken, and the staff aura vacillated between somewhat indifferent and supremely sour. It was a case study in lacklustre.
A few hundred feet down the beach was a primo example of the opposite end of the spectrum. At this other hotel (I’m purposely not naming names, because public shaming isn’t the point of this article), it was immediately evident how much love and attention had been lavished on every element of the experience. Its location and setting were no better, its size was roughly the same, and I’d bet a 500-litre margarita it was built on a similar budget. And yet, it was leagues superior in every way. Sections of the beach had been raked into Zen-like patterns, flowers floated in medallion arrangements on the surface of a foot wash basin, and everyone wore a warm smile. This was a place that had forked hard right in the direction of care.
It’s worth mentioning that care and perfection are not the same thing. Care is objective—either you do or you don’t. Perfection is subjective—a judgement in the eye of the beholder. The cool thing about care is that so long as you pursue it, so long as you go down that path, the destination you reach is not so important. Yes, it’s wonderful when the final result of a caring effort is outstanding. But even if it falls a bit short or misses the mark, you still get full points for trying, for caring. It’s the journey that matters.
The best-selling book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, may have sold 20 million copies and I’m sure there’s some merit in eschewing mindless positivity, but I want to make the case for giving a sh*t. It feels good and does good to care. Whether it’s the way a hotel is managed, a chair is designed, or a brand is positioned, things turn out better when care is central to the equation.
The Japanese figured this out a long time ago. Their obsessively caring ethos is one of the things that makes travel in that country so magical. I remember chatting with a barista at a teeny, tiny one-person coffee shop on a side street in Kyoto. I asked him if it was difficult operating such a small place, serving so few customers. To paraphrase, he told me the slow pace afforded him time to make each cup of coffee with extreme care. And that was more important to him than having a big business and making lots of money. What a master.
Contrast that approach to the dull, dour, and borderline pissy attitude of our waiter at the first hotel. As a pithy Brit would say, “What a muppet”.