My father was a very traditional man, with all of the good and the bad that went with that. He ran a house painting crew that he started himself. While everyone else modernized and took time-saving and cost-cutting measures, he prided himself on doing everything in a fairly traditional way. Other teams would use airless paint sprayers and hire efficiency experts, but he insisted that good old hard work, combined with paint rollers, was enough. He would never even look at an airless paint sprayer!
I have to admit that my father’s approach to painting works. He got many regular clients - landlords and other large property owners who would hire him for every occasion. And although we worked longer hours, and sometimes for less pay than workers on other painting crews, we got to take pride in the fact that we did a better job than anyone else.
Since he retired, however, I began to wonder about airless sprayers. I knew how my dad felt about newfangled gadgets, but at the same time we often seemed to lose clients because we could not take on as many jobs as other painting companies could. It seemed to me that it was worth checking out the airless paint sprayer. If it worked, it could revolutionize the job, and if it did not work, I was only out a couple hundred dollars.
I went out that very night and purchased a Titan airless paint sprayer. I could barely wait until morning to use it. I have to confess, I was very excited. I had built up so much anticipation that I was unprepared for the results. I figured that either the airless paint sprayer would change everything and triple productivity, or it would lead to sloth and eventual ruin. As it turns out, neither was the case.
You see, the reason that other companies did more jobs had nothing to do with the airless paint sprayer. On the other hand, my father’s refusal to use that particular tool was not the reason that we did better work. In reality, the airless paint sprayer is good for some applications, while it is not suited for others. We work more slowly because we are more thorough. Other companies work more quickly because they are less so. It turns out that the airless paint sprayer is a valuable tool, but it is not the determining factor in our success or failure.