TheBanyanTree: Wherein Peter wins the war

[peter macinnis]

I have long toyed with an episodic novel, featuring an old codger and a 
bunch of bright people who assist him in bringing down malefactors by 
using superior technology. I suppose it's based on me. Well, 
metaphorically speaking, I have just jammed the face of a singularly 
nasty little piece of work into a bowl of steaming carrion, using 
superior Google Fu. If blood sports aren't to your taste, read no more. 
I was nasty to the oaf, and because I took too much bullying in my 
youth, I enjoyed every moment of it.  If you like it, that's fine, but 
don't share it, or I'll lose my leverage on them.

When a cost-cutting operation took over the deliveries of my favourite 
paper from the local newsagent, they told us we had no choice in the 
matter, but that we would be able to specify where the paper would land. 
We live on the corner of a main road and a quiet side-street, so I 
specified delivery onto the driveway in the side street, but they chose 
to leave it at the corner, sometimes ON the main road, sometimes on a 
parked car (which might drive away), or in the gutter that runs inches 
deep in heavy rain, soaking the paper or washing it away, or on the 
footpath where any passing oaf could make off with it, and often did.

I complained, I sent them pictures, but they just ignored me, or asked 
for my phone number, so they could discuss the issue. I said there was 
nothing to discuss, just follow the customer's specifications. That sort 
of firmness would be met with a couple of days of no delivery, 
presumably to "punish" me.  In other words, it was what the army calls 
dumb insolence.  I sent them a note, pointing out that on weekends, 
their delivery person got it right, while the weekday one did not. 
Clearly, I said, the agreed deliver position was in their 'run book', 
and all they needed to do was read the manual. The response?  The 
weekend deliveries started landing on the corner. Clearly, Lucien Marlow 
(the boy wonder in charge of assaulting customers) believed he was safe.

I contacted the newspaper's editor, but while she passed the complaint 
through, they still did nothing. She said it was out of her hands, and I 
realised that the weasels were not a part of the newspaper operation, 
but a contractor. This was the ugly side of the gig economy, and after a 
quick half hour on the web, I knew what their business model was: it 
relied on a simple fact: you couldn't work out who was behind the 
operation. Well, my expertise lies in undoing facts. Lucien, the one 
clown whose name I had has never done any more than run a call centre, 
so not an intellectual, merely a legend in his own lunchtime. Having 
identified the principals, I sent the lout this ultimatum, and if it 
seems harsh, keep in mind that he was a bully who needed a reaming. I 
began with a velvet fist in an iron glove, and then escalated.


/Lucien, once you have read this, you will have to agree that you are 
lucky that I am so gentle, and so reasonable. You have deliberately 
arranged over many months for my paper to be wrongly delivered in the 
pathetic belief that you were teaching me a lesson, just because I 
required you to meet a promise your company made.//  Having reviewed 
your past employment, which hasn't amounted to very much, I am now in a 
position to bring the pathetic wreck that it is down in flaming ruins, 
and I will explain this in terms that even you will understand. First, 
note that your mistake was to be repeatedly insolent and flagrantly 
malevolent to an old journo with a background in fraud investigation. A 
word of advice: always be careful who you piss off. Some old idiots have 
skill sets you will never even dream of.
/

/You see, the whole idea of Metro Publishing Subscriber Services was 
that it would be like a Teflon-coated greased pig, where nobody could 
lay a hand on them. Looking over the web, I see a lot of people who have 
been annoyed by their inability to find anybody in MPSS that they could 
talk to. It's a good plan, but I found my way to Combined Management 
Consultants, and they are the people who deserve the blame here. As I 
see it, there's nothing to stop me posting the names, phone numbers and 
addresses of CMC people like Nick Nikit, Michelle Harvey, Peter Goes or 
others (I have them all) in public. I can post it on the web, where any 
future potential employer can see what you are, a total loser who 
couldn't keep that secret.
/

/Who knows, I may even publicly thank you for helping me get these 
details, as indeed you did. If I do that, of course, it will be the end 
of your 'career', and all because you thought you could behave like a 
thuggish bullying lout to an old codger. The bosses at CMC won't like 
you dropping them in it. I, on the other hand, and my friends, will 
enjoy my dropping you in it. This is your last chance, sunshine: email 
me tonight, apologise profusely, make no excuses, because there are 
none, but make totally sure that my paper is correctly delivered, 
tomorrow and every day thereafter, or I blow the cover on CMC, in such a 
way as to bring the blame down on you./

//

/If the paper lands in the wrong place tomorrow, I blow the whistle, and 
you will be out the door. By all means, try talking to your bosses to 
cover your rear, but make sure //they //understand that once the details 
are out there, the genie will be out of the bottle. Any threats, any 
pleas from them, and I'm ready to launch. You have gone too far, too 
many times, and now you will do /exactly /as you are told.//I have an 
email, ready to send at any time of my choice to Peter Goes, Michelle 
Harvey and Nick Nikit. I realise that as a small cog in a cheap and 
nasty operation, you may not know the first two, but you will know who 
Nick is, and he knows who they are. Do you think he'll be happy, given 
that he will almost certainly lose his job as well?/

Well, Lucien hasn't yet apologised, but the next day, and every day 
since, the paper has landed where I specified.

Fear, not fame, is the ultimate spur.

p1