The Diary
of
Anne Ku

16 November 2000 Thursday

QUALITY VS QUANTITY

Until "Total Quality Management" or TQM for short, the word "quality" was subservient to "quantity."

We grew up in an age of abundance. The more the better. I remember my mother and her neighbours comparing us, which one was taller. Height was everything until it came time to pairing us off.

One day we learn that "less is more." This threw us off balance. How can less be more?

Are quality and quantity necessarily inversely related? The have-it-all's want all of the best. The wannabe's want a lot of the best. The rest of us get most of the mediocre. Mediocrity was certainly not something I was brought up to aspire to.

Yet being mediocre and having mediocre things may not be so bad. The reverse of wanting it all is being happy with what you got - or having little.

I know someone who likes that fact that he has just three things in the world: his bike, his computer, and his clothes/shoes. I was like that when I first came into this country. For many years, everything I owned could be squeezed into a bedroom.

Once one has seen or experienced quality, one knows what quality is. For the rest of us, we will continue to confuse quality with quantity.

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