National Clothesline

When aviation was still in its infancy years, airplanes were equipped with few navigational and flight control systems. Back then, pilots had to rely more on an innate sense of their craft’s balance to be aware of changes in its positioning and performance. If subtle nuances were detected in the vibrations of one’s seat, for example, then the pilot would be able to gage by his or her own intuition how to maneuver toward a safer flight pattern.

That, in a nutshell, is how the term “flying by the seat of your pants” was derived.

The phrase now has come to mean “performing an action without a plan.” Basically, those who rely on their gut instincts instead of outside aid or instruction are flying by the seat of their pants. Everybody has done it at one time or another, mostly without choice. Nobody plans to fly by the seat of their pants, but planning is the only way to avoid it from happening.

So, instead of waiting to react to a crisis that inevitably will pop up, business owners would be well-advised to prepare for the eventuality beforehand. These days, there are just too many cleaners in the industry. Time has a funny way of evening out problems like that, and chances are, the same businesses without a current strategy will be the ones without a future.

Nowadays, drycleaning customers understand that they can afford to demand more service and expect more satisfaction because there are numerous other options just down the street. Put yourself in their shoes for a minute. If you go into a store and are not impressed with the service, how likely are you to come back? Do you want to do business with someone who flies blindly through the fog, relying only on their instinct, or would you rather trust somebody who knew the fog was approaching and installed the instruments they needed to guarantee a safer passage through it?

Too many cleaners are plodding along through turbulent skies. Many might be able to survive for the short term, keeping the bottom line just above sea level, but how long can that really last? If you don’t have the time to take a good hard look at the profit margins of your business, then perhaps it’s time you hired somebody who will. If the numbers aren’t where you’d like them to be, what do you need to do in order to change that? Are you controlling your business, or is it controlling you? Or, to put it another way: If you continue to fly by the seat of your pants, what is to prevent you from crashing on your butt.

It is unfortunate that the 59,000 citizens of Lodi, CA, have had to serve as an example of how not to proceed with cleaning up chemical contamination of a water supply. It has been a long running horror story that so far has cost millions of dollars but yielded little progress on actual cleanup. Most of the money has gone into lawsuits in which the various parties tried to prove that someone other than them was responsible. The irony is that they are all right — and all wrong.

It would be a different matter if it could be shown that someone wantonly, perhaps even intentionally, poisoned the well, so to speak. But the fact is, nobody did anything of the sort. The businesses, including drycleaners, that contributed to the chemical plumes were not violating any existing law. And it’s doubtful the city was aware its sewers were leaking, or that it might be a problem even if it was known. Nobody, in short, did anything wrong. That is, nobody did anything wrong until it became known that there was a problem. Then everything went wrong. The lawsuits began piling up, starting with a now discredited theory that the businesses and their insurance companies could be forced to pay to fix the problem.

So who ends up paying? Everyone. As the settlements begin trickling in, some insurers are agreeing to pay some of the costs. Some of the businesses are agreeing to pay some of the costs. The city itself — and by reference its taxpayers — is agreeing to pay some of the costs. The citizens of Lodi will likely pick up more of the costs through increased sewer and water rates. And now we read that the city is seeking federal assistance to help pay for the cleanup, which means that you and I could be paying some of the cost.

Ultimately, it is correct that the costs should be shared. But the costs of this cleanup, as well as many others around the country, must not be exacerbated by multi-million-dollar legal battles. If we can agree that cleanups are everybody’s problem, and proceed from there to solve it without making a side trip through the courts, Lodi can teach us a valuable lesson.