Good Enough for Government Work!

Today while I worked on the new house, I thought about the saying "Good Enough for Government Work". What would our world be like if everyone just mailed in their efforts at work, at home or in life. You know what I mean, just do it and not think about it or try to do a good job. "Just do it" may have been a good slogan for Nike but it is not good enough for me unless, it means more.
I once had a friend that when given an assignment by our boss would do it just good enough to get it done but not so good that he got asked to do it again. He made sure that he did things well enough to not get fired but I'm pretty sure that his work wasn't up to my standards. In fact, I did his job for while he went on a short tour to Washington and got in more trouble for the things he didn't tell me about than those things I did because I knew what to do. I got a call from our higher headquarters and they wanted to know when we were going to cut the order on a change in a unit. 1st, I had no idea there was a change out there and 2nd, I didn't have a copy of the change. My friend called me and said, "Remember that drawer I told you not to open? Open it". It had about a year's worth of changes that needed to be made. I started to work the changes that day and about a week later I had at least a handle on what was needed to do. I set up an action file and made time lines on all the changes. I worked that list until I had everything done. About a month later, the higher headquarters came out for a visit and to audit the job I was doing. I showed them the work I had done and they immediately had me brief their staff and from that discussion they issued a paper on how to manage changes for units. The auditor loved the work and upgraded the job two grades. My boss wouldn't give me that grade increase because I was a temp or back fill. My friend came back to Kansas and was immediately given the pay raise.
The good news is that the Chief of Staff saw the results of my hard work and hired me for a job that gave me that two grade raise. It also included a recommendation for promotion but I was then assigned to a unit in a Major's slot and had to wait a year to be promoted. The even better news was that I was immediately put in a command position and would have had to wait for a couple of years if I had been promoted.
Good work is almost always rewarded. Sometimes it is with the reward of more work but most of the time it pays in the long run. So, when I hear someone say, "Good Enough for Government Work", I am pretty confident that is is good enough for me.
MUD