Many years ago, Jerry Seinfeld did a famous bit about rental cars. He arrives at the counter and discovers that, despite having a reservation, there is no car available.
Jerry: I don’t understand. I made a reservation. Do you have my reservation?
Clerk: Yes, we do. Unfortunately, we ran out of cars.
Jerry: But the reservation is supposed to keep the car here. That’s why you have reservations.
Clerk: I know why we have reservations.
Jerry: I don’t think you do. If you did, I’d have a car. You know how to take the reservation. You just don’t know how to hold the reservation. And that’s really the most important part of the reservation.
The joke works because everyone immediately recognizes the absurdity. A reservation that doesn’t reserve anything isn’t a reservation. It’s just a conversation about a reservation.
Last week I discovered that Home Depot is keeping Jerry’s joke alive and well.
I needed to rent a large stump grinder. I called the rental department and asked if I could reserve one for Saturday.
The employee explained that he could put the reservation into the system, but there was no guarantee the machine would actually be available when I arrived.
I barely suppressed my laugh, because I suddenly was inside the Seinfeld scene in real-life. I asked what he meant. He explained that I could make the reservation, but it wouldn’t really take effect until a few hours before pickup, because they don’t want equipment sitting unused if someone makes a reservation and then doesn’t show up.
“So it’s not really a reservation, is it?” I offered. To his credit, he laughed. He knew exactly what I was pointing at. In fact, he told me they have an internal employee joke whenever something like this comes up. They simply shrug and say:
“It’s Home Depot.”
In other words, everyone involved already understands that the system doesn’t do what its name implies. At that point I wasn’t sure what to do. Should I make a reservation that isn’t a reservation? My first reaction was no. I generally try not to participate in make-believe reality.
But I’m also pragmatic, and the employee was being sincere and honest. I asked for his advice the way I might ask an attorney about parliamentary procedure. His answer?
“You might as well. We’ll see if it works.” And we both laughed. His honesty disarmed me, what can I say?
That’s not a reservation system. That’s a hope system.
This isn’t really about Home Depot. It’s about a pattern that appears everywhere once you learn to recognize it. Over time, systems often drift from the reality they were originally designed to serve, but they keep the language of that reality.
The words survive, but the function doesn’t. The label remains and the object disappears. A reservation no longer reserves. Customer service often doesn’t serve customers (I’m looking at you, Kaiser). Performance management frequently doesn’t improve performance. Strategic planning often doesn’t produce strategy. Communication frequently doesn’t communicate, but rather complicates.
The original words remain because updating the words would force people to acknowledge what the system is now actually doing. This is where the story becomes more interesting. Most systems are not failing: they are succeeding at objectives nobody is willing to state directly.
The Home Depot reservation system appears irrational if its purpose is to guarantee customers access to equipment. When I asked the employee why the non-reservation system existed, he explained that the idea was to prevent reservations from not being utilized and tying up the equipment needlessly.
“Well, then just charge the person for the reservation anyway! Problem solved.”
“Hey, it’s Home Depot,” he said, laughing, “I don’t make that decision.”
When you see that the real purpose of the non-reservation system is to maximize equipment utilization while giving customers a vague sense of reservation-value, it suddenly makes perfect sense.
The system isn’t broken. It’s serving a different objective than the one implied by the word “reservation.”
Once you see this, a powerful question emerges:
What is this system actually optimized for?
Not what the brochure says.
Not what the mission statement says.
Not what the employees promise.
What does it consistently produce?
The answer is in the output.
What does it consistently produce? It’s like “Follow the money” in crime drama. The answer is often revealing.
Many organizations discover that their incentive structures serve something very different from their stated purpose. Many leaders discover that meetings are optimized for appearing collaborative rather than making decisions. Many educational institutions are optimized for credentialing rather than learning.
Many political systems are optimized for fundraising rather than governance. Many social media platforms are optimized for engagement rather than truth. The stated purpose and the actual purpose slowly drift apart. The final stage is semantic drift.
The language becomes detached from reality, but everybody continues using it anyway. A reservation becomes something that doesn’t reserve. Leadership becomes something that doesn’t lead. Service becomes something that doesn’t serve. It’s like the names of congressional committees and bills. They almost never do what they actually say, but they sound terrific!
The gap becomes so normal that people stop noticing it.
Except occasionally someone notices, like a customer trying to rent a stump grinder or a Home Depot employee who knows the joke. And sometimes it’s Jerry Seinfeld standing at a rental car counter wondering why everyone pretends words still mean what they mean.
The older I get, the more I suspect that one of the most useful diagnostic questions in business and life is: What does this thing actually do? Not what is it called, what does it claim, or what people say about it?
What does it actually do? That’s the realm of structural thinking. Reality tends to answer that question far more honestly than the system itself.
And if you ever forget, just remember: Home Depot knows how to take the reservation. They just haven’t quite figured out the other part yet.
Words matter. Precision matters. When people say, “It’s just semantics,” I almost never agree because it usually isn’t.
Semantics is the relationship between words and reality. If the words drift, our ability to think clearly drifts with them. If a reservation doesn’t reserve, customer service doesn’t serve, leadership doesn’t lead, or communication doesn’t communicate, we gradually lose the ability to accurately describe what is happening. Once that happens, solving problems becomes much harder because we are no longer talking about reality itself; instead, we’re talking about labels that have become detached from reality.
This is especially important for leaders. Leadership is, in many ways, the discipline of maintaining accurate distinctions. Leaders establish definitions, create expectations, allocate resources, set priorities, and coordinate collective action. All of that depends on language. If the language is vague, the thinking becomes vague. If the thinking becomes vague, decisions become vague. If decisions become vague, accountability disappears.
One of the simplest and most valuable leadership habits is to regularly ask: “Is this thing actually what we’re calling it?” Is this strategy producing strategy? Is this meeting producing decisions? Is this feedback producing learning? Is this policy accomplishing its stated purpose?
The moment a leader stops caring about those questions, language begins to drift away from reality. Once reality and language separate, organizations slowly become theaters of performance rather than instruments of effectiveness.
Precision is not pedantry. Precision is respect for reality.