For the most part I’m not a really patient guy. I tend to lead with my gut instinct and let the chips fall where they may. 99% of the time this works for me. It’s on rare occasion that my gut has failed me. Even the mistakes I’ve made because of my lack of patience have often been small. The number of times my mistakes have been major can be counted on 1 hand.
One of my major character faults has always been the inability to let something go. I hold grudges for years. True story; I stopped talking to one of my best friends from high school because he didn’t ask me to be in his wedding. I literally stopped talking to him for 3.5 years. The killer was, when I finally talked to him he explained that the reason he didn’t ask me was because it would have meant a lot of travel between Chicago and New Jersey (where the wedding was). In short, he was looking to save me time, money, and effort. I felt like a complete idiot after he explained the situation to me.
I’ve gotten better with the grudge situation. I’m less inclined to hold a grudge over something trivial. But, when you maliciously wrong me or my family, I don’t just hold a grudge, I turn that grudge into vengeance.
In 2004 I was living in Chicago with Cheryl. The house we were living in needed some tuck pointing work done. Being relatively new to the area, but very web savvy I opted to use Service Magic to find a company that would do the tuck pointing. We interviewed 4 companies and chose a smaller outfit with good references, that also ended up being roughly 1/3 cheaper than the other 3 bids. We paid 50% up front and were set to pay the remaining 50% after the job was completed. The owner/project manager estimated it was a 4 day job and they would start on Saturday. Very cool I thought. They were cheap, fast, and had a solid reputation.
The team arrived bright and early on Saturday and made some progress. They left at 4pm and indicated they’d be back tomorrow (Sunday) morning. They showed up around 10 am and left unexpectedly by 1 pm. To be fair it started raining and if you know anything about tuck pointing, you’d know that tuck pointing in the rain sucks.
Well they never showed up on Monday (Day 3). I called the boss and he didn’t return my call on Monday. They didn’t show up on Tuesday (Day 4). I called the boss again and again he didn’t return my call. Finally on Wednesday after I left several messages, he called me back and basically told me they underbid the project, he wanted more money, had no plans to send his team back over until he received more money, and was planning to keep the 50% deposit I gave them.
As you can imagine, I was little irked by this. At this point, we’re several days behind schedule, he has 50% of the payment, and I’m being shook down. My blood was boiling, but I tried exercise some patience. I explained to him that I was willing to let bygones be bygones, but he owed me the 50% back since he backed out of the project. He essentially told me to go screw myself and that I wasn’t going to see a dime. I countered with, I’ll sue you for the money. His rebuttal was, “good luck, it’ll cost you more in court than what I owe you.”
This was a mistake on his part. A serious mistake. See, I tried to be civil, but he crossed a line. You can’t just maliciously screw with me and get away with it. I exercised some serious patience over the next two days. See, I have friends, just like you have friends. And in addition to friends, I’m like a relentless doberman when you cross me. So here’s what I did:
- Talked with Service Magic to understand my options
- Tracked down his on-record business license
- Called the city and county offices where my house was located and where his business was located
- Talked to a few of lawyer friends, all of whom weren’t going to charge me anything
That Friday, I gave him a call from a different phone number than I had been using. He picked up and explained to him he had two options.
- Return my money to me
- Face a wrath that he couldn’t imagine
His words were, “go fuck yourself.” Clearly he chose #2. Not a good move.
The following Monday, I set a bunch of wheels in motions:
- Service Magic suspended his account. By suspending his account he was no longer able to receive leads and any current jobs needed to be stopped immediately. If he was using the same 50/50 split on other projects, this meant he was out a lot of cash.
- His business license didn’t allow him to do work in my county, it only allowed him to do work in the city and county where the business was licensed. Big mistake on his part, because now the county/city where I was living was very curious about how much work he had been doing illegally in their city. They coordinated with the city/county where his license was registered in and had his license suspended. In other words he couldn’t even do any work legally in the city/county that he was able to do before; now he couldn’t work anywhere…legally.
- I asked my lawyers to file both criminal charges (in their haste to take back their equipment, they took some of my stuff) and civil charges.
So later that week, this jerk who I’ve been dealing with, got an amazing shit-burger to eat from the city, county, Service Magic, and some lawyers. Well, my phone was blowing up left and right from the boss man himself. I let him sweat it out for a day and the called him back. As you might imagine, he was very much wanting to resolve the situation quickly and amicably.
Now, I had done my homework. Because the lawyers weren’t going to cost me a thing, there was no reason to call them off. I couldn’t call the city and county off; their investigation was irreversible. The only thing I could do was talk to Service Magic and let them know things were resolved; but even doing that would still leave him with a permanent strike that would hurt his ability to generate revenue from Service Magic.
So, I promised him the following…if he came back that night with a cash payback, I’d do what I could. As you might imagine, he showed up that night, wearing bells, and carrying cash.
Ok, so why the long piece of history? Well, at the time, my wife thought I was a bit crazy, but recently we ran into another situation. Someone tried to maliciously screw with not just me, but the family. I gave this person multiple opportunities to fix things and set them right; more specifically, I afforded them the opportunity to walk away, just like the above situation. I wish I could share more, but unfortunately, it’s not something I can discuss openly here…yet.
All I can say is, if you thought the above showed an act of vengeance, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
Head of Social Media at Walgreens. Interactive marketer, innovator, boat rocker, continuous learner, movie lover, risk taker, dad and all around good guy. I'm always up for a spirited conversation. These are my thoughts and ramblings, not those of my employer.
