TheBanyanTree: Wherein Peter wins the war

[Kitty Park]

Love it, love it, love it Peter!


Kitty
kcp-parkplace.blogspot.com




On Wed, Apr 7, 2021 at 2:49 AM peter macinnis via TheBanyanTree <
thebanyantree at lists.remsset.com> wrote:

> 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
>
>
>
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