Don’t take things at face value.
Don’t just believe what people tell you. Especially don’t believe what advertisers tell you. Educate yourself. Honestly, most people are probably pretty genuine, but many aren’t, especially when you consider that corporations are considered “people” these days.
I got thinking about this today after reading an interesting couple articles about “Domestic” Kobe Beef (read it here) and how you can’t get Kobe Beef in the US, even though restaurants and online suppliers offer it to you all over the place. I’ve never ordered fake Kobe Beef, and I never really had any intention of doing so, but now I really never will.
Look at what motivates people or companies when they tell you things. What do they get out of the transaction they want you to make? What are they selling? What do they want from you?
People are disingenuous. Many of us are anyway, and I continue to learn that I, for one, really need to be smarter about what I take for face value. I think I’ve been extremely lucky in our 12 years of business–we have never been ripped off. Not once. And we work for new customers every week or few weeks as we finish jobs and move on to the next one. I have dealt with scumbags, of course, but nobody has ever really managed to pull one over on us (that I know of, anyway. *sigh*).
I’m thinking about this yet again in relation to the former friend of mine who stole from MisCon. It seems like every day we learn about things he has done over the past few years that never came to light, mostly because people didn’t want to disparage him or his reputation. I’m not going to go into detail, but he was fired from multiple jobs either for stealing or for Had we known about half of these things, we would have investigated MisCon’s fiances a hell of a lot sooner. This criminal wouldn’t have been able to get away with as much as he did.
More than anything, this makes me wonder what else he did to people. How far did it go? What could we have done to stop it? Who else is up to no good?
I’m not becoming jaded at all (at least I don’t think so), but I am becoming a lot more vigilant, even with good friends. No longer can I trust my instincts when it comes to things like this.
You shouldn’t either.