Sometimes taking the Butcher’s word for it is good enough, other times you really need to stick you head up the bull’s ass to get a good look at that t-bone (thanks Chris Farley for that one, your zingers on Tommy Boy are infamous). There are times that just taking someone’s word when they are speaking on behalf of another person is just not good enough, you really need to get to the source, because things get lost in translation.

I recently had an experience where someone was relaying information to me about someone else and had I just taken his word for it, I would have walked away and not pursued the issue anymore. Either my ignorance or gut (I like to think it was the latter) forced me to continue pursuing the issue and go to the source to find out more. Good thing I did, because the source told me something entirely different than the person who was supposed to be speaking on authority for him. I had no reason to believe that the person was purposely misleading me, in fact I know there was nothing malicious meant by it, it was just a good old fashion example of how one person cannot speak on behalf of another and be 100% accurate all the time.

Lesson has been learned by me and for that I suggest to anyone, if something is extremely important to you and you are not dealing with the source when you are gathering your information, you might want to take a peek up the bull’s ass to get a better look :-).