Every year, there are countless researches and reports on ranking of everything. From hotel to airlines, standard of living to cost of living, ease of doing business, cleanliness, literacy rate, efficiency, etc. We have best places to live, best places to do business, and what have you.
All these are based on various measuring standards and criteria set.
For example, in measuring world's most livable cities, some of the criteria are safety, education, hygiene, health care, culture, environment, recreation, political-economic stability and public transportation.
What if you measure using different criteria?
How about measuring a country's literacy rate by the condition of their public toilet? How about measuring a country's level of economic development by how well traditions are preserved?
I was at Wat Chedi Luang in Chiang Mai when I had to use their toilet.
Now, this is a very old temple site with none of the modern amenities to speak of. I wondered how was the condition of the toilet. Will it be wet and dirty? Will it be infected with insects and mosquitoes? Will it smell?
Are you thinking why such thoughts?
If you're Singaporean, this is normal. The condition of public toilets in Singapore has never been pleasant. Most toilets are usually dirty, smelly and wet, especially those in the market, stand alone cafes and restaurants, and coffee shop located in housing flats. Toilets in shopping malls are slightly better and condition depends if it's a new and up-class one or an old run-down one. Probably the hotel ones are the cleanest.
To my surprise, the toilet at the temple is not only clean but the floor was dry as well. The only minus point was there was no toilet paper. But that's ok cos I've tissue.
The toilets in Thailand has never failed to amaze me. Most of them are kept very clean and dry. Even at places like Chatuchak Weekend Market and Amphawa floating market, the toilets are exceptionally clean and free of foul smell.
So far, I noticed the Thais who used the toilet never dirty the place and do not little. If you are talking about Bangkok, I would assume there are more people with higher education, which is similar to Singapore. And probably they are more cultured and therefore the behavior.
But I'm in Chiang Mai and the toilets are even cleaner than modern Singapore. Why can't Singapore, a modern city with all the resources and a highly educated population have clean toilets? Why can't the cleaners keep the toilet clean? And more importantly, why can't a highly educated population have some basic courtesy to use the toilet properly?
You see toilet cubicles with toilet papers and rubbish all over the place. Toilet bowls are stained with foul smell.
We may be higher educated but our behavior is definitely worse than an uneducated person.
Are we too stressed and just want to vent our anger by dirtying places or just throwing rubbish anywhere? Or we think that we are entitled to such privilege? Do we feel we are more superior just because we are more educated?
I'm very sure Singapore will rank very low if we use condition of public toilet as a measure of the level of literacy.
And what has it got to do with your business?
Think about the things that you use to measure your business. Do you use them because everyone else is using them? Do they make sense? Are they an accurate measure? Do they better represent what is most important for you? Do you have a different measure?