TheBanyanTree: Wherein Peter wins the war

[tobie at shpilchas.net]

Oh, you cannot imagine how satisfying that was, Peter! The vicarious pleasure is nearly more than I can bear ——— but in a very good way.

	I should maybe hire you to loosen the teeth (real, metaphoric or both) of the yokels at Social Security who send me letters every few years saying, "Ooops. We have inadvertently overpaid Meyshe B. Shapiro-Nyg (they can’t fit the whole name in their plug in missives) for the last 15 years.  You owe us $35,487.01. Pay us now. If you do not pay us in full now, we will deduct a monthly amount from Meyshe B. Shapiro-Nyg’s disability allotment. Therefore, until the debt of $35,487.01 is paid in full, Meyshe B. Shapiro-Nyg will receive $02.24 a month."

	So Peter, can you help?  It’s amazing that I get these error letters every few years. I guess they just keep making mistakes.  But who gets to make a mistake like that and exact such pounds of flesh from others for their own mistakes?  It can be appealed of course and I do.  But it involves leaping through hoops of fire and sitting across from functionaries filling out forms, protesting that he didn’t do it, he didn’t know and the money has long ago been spent (you can’t have more than $2000.00 to your name or they cut off services. Be poor. Be very poor.)

	You have earned my undying respect, if you didn’t have it before.  Now it is additionally undying.

Your friend,

Tobie
Meyshe’s mom




> On Apr 6, 2021, at 11:49 PM, 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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"Shame is a terrible thing, wasted on people who have the integrity to feel it."      
 THS, 2017






Tobie Helene Shapiro
tobie at shpilchas.net <mailto:tobie at shpilchas.net>