Fatale Abstraction

I haven't mentioned work much in many moons, so I'll rag on about something that happened this week.

There was a hideous, judgmental toad-of-a-man who did business with our company, and I busted him for something highly unethical. Rather than fessing up and being an adult and admitting an error, he spewed a raging stream of bitter vitriol aimed primarily at me in attempt to deflect attention away from his wrong-doing. I of course, am lily-white so his harangue fell flat. Hurrah! I kept my mouth shut and remained cool, although it was tempting to tell him what a jowl-centric hideously skin-tagged old toad he is. (Why do men crave being dominated by me???) He was fairly begging me for the wire-brush enema he so richly deserved, but I decided to do things the Italian way and let this platter of revenge cool sufficiently so he'd feel extra-super-stupid when the shit really came down and landed on his bottom-line. I was the very picture of collected deportment, knowing I had the whip-handle over him. A mere 3 months later, our contract with him was up for renewal, and I sent him a formal and brief letter saying that we would be dissolving the business relationship with him and we wished him the best as he sought other arrangements. Predictably, he was in a rage, quaking and swearing revenge. We shrugged it off. La la!

Our industry is a rather tightly knit community in town, and we have a yahoo group consisting of about 150 people who see each other fairly regularly and are in touch online daily. When I arrived at work on Thursday, two people in the office asked me "so who do you think Jane is?" This didn't register since I hadn't checked my email since Tuesday, and they explained someone named "Jane" had been on a tear on the yahoo group bitching a la poison pen about our company and making wild threats. Actually, their first 4 or 5 posts on the group were in the guise of a concerned citizen questioning our ethics and going on about what a detriment to the community we were. The only person specifically mentioned was me, and I was called an "airhead." I had to giggle. Misanthropic, scrotum-shredding little old me? A dingbat? Yeah! Fooled em again! I read the volley of emails that had flown through the group that day, and about 10 seconds into reading the butchery of the English language "Jane" had set afoot, I knew it was our favorite old bridge-troll whose grasp of the language had always been wobbly at best. Syntax errors abounded, grammatical and spelling errors, atrocious confusion of terms - it was rather pitiful that I felt more inclined to guffaw than to be steamed at the unfounded attack. I actually felt sorry for the old goat.

Then again, I've always said it's better to be underestimated than to have a bitter enemy know exactly where you're coming from. My philosophy is that I take everyone at face-value. When I meet people, they have a clean slate, and I don't judge them or make assumptions about their worthiness as a human being etc. However, if forced into an adversarial role, let me just say I keep very good documentation and always present my cases convincingly. I'm sure this is not the last we'll hear from Jane. I'll report back on this if anything tasty occurs.

By the way - this is my second brilliant rendering in Paint program, and I'm the bee in toady's bonnet. BZZZZZ!