Nobody voted out the hem

A tailor in Jeddah used to finish every thobe hem by hand. It took an extra half hour, and nobody had asked for it. The machine hem is faster, almost invisible, and nearly as good.

The first time he skipped it was just him, on a crowded week, cutting a corner. Everyone does that sometimes.

Turning it into the way things are done took more people. The apprentice who learned the shortcut as the method. The customer who noticed the hem and said nothing, because the price had not changed and the collar sat right. The tailor next door who dropped his price, so this one had to match. The customer's son, who never knew there had been another way.

Nobody planned it. There was no day on which the hand finish was voted out. Each person simply cared a little less than before, because caring a little less was easier that week, and the week after.

That is how ordinary becomes the standard. Not by a decision, but by a long line of quiet agreements, and it only holds if nearly everyone in the line goes along.

Which is also the hopeful part. A line like that is fragile. It takes one person to say: not here, not on this one. The tailor who goes back to the needle. The customer who asks for the hand finish by name and is happy to wait an extra day. The master who teaches the slow way first.

Mediocrity needs a crowd to agree to it. It can be refused by one.