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Deceived by Appearances
For much of life we hear “You can’t judge a book by its cover.” In many cases the advice is stupid, as it was obviously given at a time when all books were leather-bound and didn’t have imagery from the book on the cover. The odds are if the book has a picture of a swooning woman in low-cut dress and a manful bare chested barbarian in a kilt and broadsword, it’s not a children’s book.
For some reason or another, we spend more of our time as adults avoiding calling a spade a spade. We hesitate to be honest with how we think or feel about things, avoiding the uncomfortable truths in our world. Rather, we prefer white lies and convenient deception to walk around the hole, instead of confronting it and calling it out as the pit it is.
It doesn’t mean that hasty judgements can’t be wrong, or that you won’t discover the book you purchased for a late night bubble bath isn’t immensely disappointing, regardless of cover art.
Recently, I was performing Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) audits, and found myself in such a scenario.
I had two Amish farmers to call on that day, the first of which I arrived at promptly at 7:00 AM, only to find out they weren’t expecting me until 1:00PM. The scene was one I had been a part of before, when the farmer hasn’t anything ready and will exasperate me when I return later.
