About this quote

Desperate situations force you to deal with things that are messy and repulsive. When you are fighting to survive a crisis, you cannot afford to be picky about your methods. Sometimes the only way to save a project or a budget is to climb right into the muck of a terrible problem. But what is your alternative? Just swallow your disgust and finish the job.

When to use it

• You say this to your coworker when you finally open the legacy codebase that your predecessor swore was clean, only to find a tangled mess of broken patches.
• Recalled when you have to clean out your teenager's gym bag after it sat in a hot car trunk for a full week.
• Spoken when you crawl under the kitchen sink to fix a leak and find a wall of black mold behind the rotting wood.
• Said to your teammate when you enter the locker room of an old, neglected community pool after a grueling practice.