A giant ship’s engine broke down and no one could repair it. So, the owner hired a mechanical engineer with over 40 years of experience.
The engineer inspected the engine very carefully, from top to bottom. After seeing everything, the engineer unloaded his bag and pulled out a small hammer.
He gently knocked on an area of the engine with the hammer. Soon, the engine came to life again. The engine was fixed!
Seven days later the engineer submitted his bill to the owner: the total cost of repairing the giant ship was $20,000.
“What?!” said the owner. “You did almost nothing. Give me a detailed itemized bill.”
The engineer responded:
1. Tap with a hammer: $2
2. Knowing where to knock and how much to knock: $19,998
The importance of appreciating one’s expertise and experience cannot be stressed enough. . . Because, that experience is the result of years of struggles, hours of trial and error, experiments, thousands of hours of reading, sleepless nights, pain and even tears.
If I do a job in 5-10 minutes it’s because I spent 20 years learning how to do that in 5-10 minutes. You owe me for the years, not the minutes.