I find flies especially irritating. Like a friendly dog that wants to explore you entirely, they are the great intruder of personal space. Unlike the friendly dog however, the fly gets into all kinds of unsavory places and in my mind the fly is indelibly linked to and a symbol of all things dirty. Only the roach comes to mind as nastier than the fly, an overreaction I’m sure.
As summer draws to a close, my outdoor activities have increased allowing the fly to take his rightful seat at the throne as king of irritations. Again, I completely understand that I’m on the verge of being considered a germ freak, but the fly is an irritating fellow. You can swat and swipe at them and they still find a way to land on your food or the rim of your drink again and again. Efforts to ignore them go unfulfilled. And, even if you don’t share my opinion of their nastiness, most would agree they are irritating. The proof, most people kill them.
For me, the fly also represents a business analogy. This seemingly inconsequential little guy, so tiny you’d like to ignore him, can spoil a party. Consider a cookout. Lots of people, drinks, fun, kids running about, laughter and smiles. There he sits, the fly with a dozen buddies crawling all over the food and drinks while people talk. You shoo him. He lands on someone’s forehead. You shoo him again, he moves to your arm then to your drink then to your plate. The fly is a relentless, determined spoiler. He always wants to disrupt your party, mildly irritate people, and he’s only interested in himself.
Little things can ruin the entire experience. It takes a lot of work to prevent the little irritations in the daily experience of your customers, too. It’s a lot of work to get rid of the flies in your business. I am consistently on the lookout for flies. I’m the flyswatter or at least the fly spotter. Always working to prevent having flies, spot them quickly when they enter the scene, and immediately escort them out of our business party. After all, too many flies are a signal that something must be rotten.