Seriously, if the dishes are clean, how much more excellence do I need? Same with most menial house-cleaning tasks. I don't mind a messy house, so why put more effort into doing these things than necessary?
You weren't doing what they were doing any more than a person with a dishwasher or robot vacuum are doing the chore of washing dishes or vacuuming, even if they are getting a similar result. You simply made the dishwasher, which is far more interesting than doing the manual stuff.
It wasn't redeemed by attitude, but by tools that made it better. Others might not have had the knowledge to so, which reflects better on what most folks are stuck with. Either no knowledge of ways to make it better or lack of permission to use that knowledge. Unlike you, they are stuck. The conveyor line only moves at x speed, you cannot tear the sale signs fast enough, federal laws say you have to fill out these forms, the company wants everyone to do it this way because compliance is better and standardised.
Actually, this is false. I've been programming for 30 years straight, except for a brief 1 year stint as a data entry operator. I made it my goal to be the best data entry operator they had ever seen. This was for Robert Half/Accountemps, an employment agency that both acts as a headhunter firm for data entry operators and a contracting company that hires out data entry operators. I was able to continuously focus on getting better in such that I could accomplish as much in 4 hours as they're best high-end "professional" data entry operators could do in a day, with similar accuracy metrics. I did this by programming a series of macros to accelerate what I did, and other tricks such as pre-sorting similar items.
While I do agree with your general sentiment to some extent, the best way to deal with undesirable menial tasks is to dig in and push for excellence.