When dealing with the bureaucracy, you must ask exactly the right question to get exactly the right answer.

 

I witnessed this in relation to our farm.  Each year, the Dept. of Agriculture takes fly-over photos of the agricultural land in the state.  One of the contractors working on our project went to Augusta to get copies of the photos of our land for the past five years.

 

He returned to report that there were no photos of the project site.  Three days later, one of the other contractors returned from the same Dept. of Agriculture and showed us the very photos we needed.

 

The first contractor insisted, “They told me three days ago they didn’t have any photos of this area.”  The second contractor replied, “They didn’t have photos, they had slides."

 

Only the right question gets you the right answer.