Advice Time Limit

The other day I mentioned to a friend of mine that at some point soon I wanted to take a golf trip down to Florida. "Oh," he said, "you have to try this course I played last time I was down there. Great price, good layout. Really a fun course." Intrigued, I tried to look up the place he recommended. After not finding a website for the place, or even a review for it on another website (which should have been the first red flag) I asked my friend if he could remember the general location of the course so I could Google Earth it. After getting a basic idea of where I should be looking, I started searching the area he remembered. No golf courses to be found. (And this is Florida, so that's actually hard to pull off.) Then, after a little more Googling, I found out why: first off, my friend gives terrible directions. I was looking in an entirely wrong section of Florida. Secondly, the course isn't there anymore - it's been turned into a row of condos. In fact, the course hasn't been there for years. The condos went up roughly five years ago. So, I asked my friend when was the last time he played this place and after a minute to think it over, he recalled that it must have been a decade or so.

Now, had they just finished construction, I would have simply shrugged my shoulders and moved on. After all, this is not the first time that I have been given advice that has passed its expiration date. On more than one occasion I have been advised to try a restaurant, only to discover that the restaurant is now a dry cleaners or some other such business. In this time of constant business turn-over, that can happen to the best of us. However, my friend hadn't been there in a decade. Yet, he appeared to honestly think that nothing would have changed during all that time, which is almost impossible. Because of this I want to institute a statute of limitations on recommendations. If you have not been to a place in over five years, then you should no longer be allowed to tell other people they should go there. This isn't just a good idea because the place could have closed or moved locations; even if it is still there, you have no way of knowing if it has changed owners or head chefs. What if your telling someone that they should try the steak, only to discover the new guy's specialty is sushi? [Sidebar: I am willing to extend the recommendation if you have at least sent someone else there within a calendar year and they have reported back that the place is still standing and nothing has changed.]

This statute of limitations shouldn't just be applied to restaurants or vacation destinations. Through the years of trial and error, we as a society have come up with many new methods to replace what people used to feel were the tried and true methods of doing certain activities. That's why I feel if you haven't been involved in something for a number of years then you shouldn't try to tell the people currently trying to do that activity how they should be proceeding. Think about it like this: I haven't worked at Gillette Stadium for two (glorious, glorious) years. When I left they hadn't even finished construction on Patriot Place. Therefore, I'm certainly not about to tell you where you should try to park when you go to a game. For all I know the media lot (which was always the lot you wanted to sneak into) could be in a completely different location. I wouldn't want my bad advice to lead you to parking in the most remote lot while paying twice as much as everyone else. You'd be (rightfully) pissed if that happened. I know that it can be hard to admit when we don't have an answer to a person's question, but I would rather tell someone I hadn't been to a place in years than have them drive out of their way, only to find the steakhouse is now a bank.