Let Them Set Their Own Trap

When I was younger, I was a rural paper carrier on a 100 mile backroads route. I ran 7 days a week, and only got New Year's Day, Easter, Victoria Day, Canada Day, Labour Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas Day off. The 'rain or shine' thing is a joke to a rural paper carrier; we were out at 3AM in snow country; hours before the snow plows, and not only had to drive on roads that were snow covered, but also continually pull off of them into even deeper snow on the shoulder to put the papers into their boxes. We had to deal with -30° weather, windchill, snow, sleet, and ice storms with the window open. Yeah, all that 'the mail must go through!' jazz except it was newspapers. Deer and other animal road hazards, downed trees, junk that fell off of trucks, drunks stumbling home on foot in the dark and trying to stop you to get a ride were all in a night's work. Flat tires and worse: car breakdowns in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere in the age before cell phones just added to the fun. And being sick, because there were no sick days; you just drove, sick or not. If you could put a paper out the window, you could barf out the window, too. 

Being a paper carrier wasn't fun, and not getting paid worth a hoot wasn't fun, either, but what really wasn't fun was having a loudmouth power tripping credit stealer of a boss on top of it all. The supervisor I had was miserable. He got a cut of everything we did, so he made sure we drove ourselves half to death so he wouldn't suffer a penny's loss, or have any grief of his own to deal with. He regularly berated and insulted and threatened all of his carriers, and made them feel like dirt. Threatening to fire us was one of his favorite tactics. I was a particular target, because he seemed to know I had potential to break out of the groove I was wearing into the earth, and he planned to keep me there because I was a pretty good carrier. 

Time went by, and I resented my station in life. Then, one glorious day, I just had enough. I finally quit to take some time to figure out something else to do that would be a whole lot more rewarding than delivering newspapers. Counting rats in a ship's belly is more rewarding than delivering newspapers. 

Once I made up my mind, I quit that very day. Loyal to my customers only, I completed the run, but resolutely decided I had delivered my last newspaper, that very morning. 

Celebrating the end of that rut in my life, a couple of buddies and I went on a little trip. It was in early January, 1999, and we were headed to Toronto. Well, in early 1999, Toronto, or T.O, as it is often called, was headed into the throes of a huge, crippling snowstorm at that very time. We were shooed off of Highway 401 by the Ontario Provincial Police, whom had shut it down. Being a long term paper carrier, driving in a snowstorm didn't bother me in the slightest. As a matter of fact, I actually relished it and was known for it, but my buddy Mike was driving, and it didn't matter who was driving once the 401 was shut down. 

Through the blinding snow, we found a motel that had a vacancy, and checked in for the night. The guys were worried about what my boss might do to me for quitting. They were afraid I may have signed some obligation to perform years before, and, due to my infamous rotten memory, had forgotten about it, and was risking being sued for just up and quitting. 

I wasn't worried; not in the slightest. They asked me how I couldn't be worried with such a vindictive boss whom so obviously relished his power over me. I just said, "Watch; I'm just going to let him be himself", and picked up the motel room phone and called him. I held the phone back so the guys could hear the whole conversation. 

"Hello?"

"Yeah, this is Danny. I won't be doing the route in the morning"

"What?! Why not?!"

"Because I'm stuck in Brighton in a snowstorm. The 401 is closed. You can hardly see your hand in front of your face. Turn on the news. I can't go anywhere".

A bunch of hot headed ranting and raving and accusations and threats ensued on the other end of the line and scorched its way through the wires to me. I just interjected a rather insincere "Sorry", and, "I can't" here and there, and let him go on. He ranted and raged, and then finally finished with an "Fine - I'll do the route myself from now on!", and slammed the phone down. Thoroughly pleased with myself, I hung up my end of the line with a wide smile of deep satisfaction just splitting my face from one side to the other. 

Incredulous, the boys asked, "What just happened here?"

Absolutely delighted, I responded, "I just got fired!" They asked me how I knew I was going to get fired, and I happily explained, "Remember I said, 'I'm just going to let him be himself'? Well, I just did, and he just was". 

The only way he could continue his escalation without softening his all-powerful stance was to fire me. He had no other choice at that point to maintain his superiority over me. As always, he got his way. But the trap I let him set for himself was where his authority over me also ended. That's where his bravado took him. To win at that point, there was nothing he could do but fire me to maintain his position of ultimate superiority. He painted himself into his own corner, and his pride wouldn't let him ask for a way out. The paper now couldn't sue me for failure to perform, because their route supervisor fired me with authority. The final action was on him, not me, and I had audio witnesses.

I was free. 

Put another way: For me to win, I had to lose.  He thought he won, but, in the end, I did, because, for once, I got what I wanted, not what he wanted. The reality he actually lost likely only really settled in on him at 3AM the next morning when he had to get out of his warm cozy bed and go out in the cold and snow to do my former job until he trained someone else for it. But, at that time, I was sitting in a Tim Horton's in Brighton, digesting a big meal I had lustily scarfed down with one of the guys, because I was so happy I couldn't sleep. I was probably more happy about being fired than most people ever are for being hired.

During my time as a paper carrier, I was also buying and selling tractors. Mostly antique tractors. I sold them to collectors in the USA, where they had more disposable income, and their money was worth more both there in what they could do with it, and here against our Canadian dollar.

My method was simply to subscribe to antique tractor collectors newsletters, and read the 'Wanted' part of the classified ads to see what tractors were in the most demand there and then find them here. At first I'd call that guy and tell him I had a tractor he was looking for and he'd come and buy it. It got to where a couple or a few collectors rented a semi together and sent it to get a whole load of 6 or 7 tractors. 

One of the hot tractors in those days was called a 'Goodison Orchard'. Goodison Industries was the Oliver distributor in Canada. A large order of about two hundred Oliver 66, 77, and 88 Orchard tractors was made in Florida, and then reneged on. Orchard tractors had a very condensed market, so Oliver had a bit of a dilema on their hands; what to do with two hundred surplus specialty market tractors? Goodison Industries was pretty adaptive, so Oliver contacted them and offered them a special bulk rate on those two hundred tractors. An agreement was made and Goodison brought them into Ontario. They stripped all of the specialty sheet metal off of them that protected the fruit trees they normally worked under, and sold them to Ontario farmers at a discount over our usual Oliver 66, 77, and 88 Standard tractors. They still functioned exactly the same, but just had a lower operator's platform. That was it. Years later, they became a desirable collector's tractor and I knew of several around the Ottawa Valley. 

One time a rich Oliver collector from Ohio was in my yard to pick up a couple of Oliver tractors. A rare Oliver Super 44 offset like a Farmall A, and another one. That was all he could carry, but I had a clean, straight, sharp 66 Goodison Orchard sitting there. He asked what I'd sell it for and I replied I wanted $2000.00US for it. He said he would take it and left. He didn't offer a dime downpayment. 14 solid months went by and he never sent me a penny for it. I needed the money and it was a super easy sale because it was already a hot commodity, and also because it was so pristine. I put an ad in the Oliver Collector's News, and the phone rang off the hook the first night. The first guy that called said he would buy it and a cheque would be in the mail in the morning. He was good to his word. If I remember correctly, 33 more eager buyers called that first evening of distribution of the newsletter.

The guy that spoke for it well over a year before was a businessman that owned a huge concrete company with over 100 four axle mixer trucks on the road. He didn't see the ad the first night, but called a few evenings later and absolutely ripped a strip off of me. He made me feel two inches tall for selling a tractor I had held onto for 14 long months without a nickel on it. My $2000.00 was huge to me, but likely wouldn't have been much more than an hour or two's income to him. Well, I was dirt, and I represented all of Canada to him; "You're a typical Canadian!" He then told me he'd see to it I'd never sell another tractor in the USA again and slammed the phone down.

After he so angrily hung up, I had a change of heart. He made me think I had gone back on my word. That I had done him wrong. Further to that, he also seemed to be of the mindset and influence to put me out of business. 

Feeling absolutely rotten to the core, I called up the guy that said he was mailing the cheque, and asked if I could return it when I received it. His firm reply was, "Absolutely not; I bought that tractor fair and square and it's mine, and I'm going to tell you something..." He went on to lay out how massive a business the other guy was running because he knew of him. He finished by telling me, "If he really wanted that tractor he should have paid you for it! You don't need to be financing a multi-millionaire's hobby!" This time I got put in my place in an honest fashion with a clear, realistic picture of the situation. Set straight. Loud and clear. Roger dodger... 

Where does a multi-multi millionaire get off making me sit on what was big money for me but chump change for him for an untold amount of time? I re-evaluated my low estimation of myself and applied it onto him instead. All these years later I realize I was dealing with one major big time narcissist. Those kinds of people think the sun, moon, and stars revolve around them.

Being a narcissist, he definitely meant it when he said he was going to try to destroy my reputation. It wasn't an idle threat. That's what narcissists often do once they don't get their own way. They lash out with spite and venom to try to cause whatever harm they are able to. At an Oliver Collector's meeting, he actually got up on the stage and took the mic and ran my name into the dirt. He said I was dishonest and a shyster and I couldn't be trusted! What a petty friggin' creep. 

Well, it backfired on him big time when a bunch of different guys that I had done business with over the years that were in attendance each stood up and told him to shut his big mouth because they had bought tractors from me and said I was a straight shooter so it was obviously him that wasn't right. He was told to shut the heck (that wasn't the word) up and get off the stage! One of the Oliver guys there that I had done business with excitedly called me and told me the whole story, and that's how I know. He set his own trap and sprung it on himself. I had been using his name when I sold tractors to other guys. The gentleman on the phone told me, "Now that you won't associate yourself with him anymore you'll sell more tractors than ever!" He was absolutely right about that. That guy was a loud-mouthed schnook and using his name as a reference was actually holding me back instead of promoting me. Sometimes you just have to be patient and wait for a wrong situation to right itself. 'The truth will come out in the wash'.

After I got into the parts business, before I started physically taking shipments across the border myself, I always had to deal with American buyers getting US Customs bills. Anything over $200.00US was subject to a Customs bill, and they could be serious. Doing my best to inform them, I put warnings all over our website in red boxes with bold white letters like a STOP sign to make people fully aware of what they were subject to when buying from us. There was a warning at the top of the home page, at the bottom of it, on the contact information page, and on the checkout page after they placed an order, giving them a final chance to back out and ask me to cancel their order and refund their money. There was no excuse for getting a Customs bill unawares. If they could read the part description, they could certainly read the warnings also.

Not everyone accepts personal responsibility well. A customer ordered a dual gang hydraulic and power steering pump for an IH tractor off of my website at a price of $800.00US. A week later he got his pump with an accompanying US Customs bill. He called me up and told me I should be liable for that bill. I told him he was warned twice on the home page, once on the contact page, and one last time on the back page after his checkout, and, if he ignored all of those warnings in bold white letters in red boxes, I sure wasn't responsible for his bill. He snarled at me, "You'll never sell another part in Ohio", and hung up. Now where did I hear that before? Lo and behold, three months later, I received another order from him for over $200.00, so sure to get a Customs bill. I guess  he was dumb enough to tell someone else not to buy from me because they'd get a Customs bill, and the other guy said something to the effect of, "His website warns you'll get a Customs bill for a purchase of over two hundred dollars, and you ordered 4 times that much; what did you expect would happen?" At least that's how I picture his comeuppance going down. That guy has since become a semi-regular customer. No apology for threatening to put me out of business. That never comes from those types and you'd better not hold your breath waiting for it. Just don't get anxious and uptight when you encounter someone like that and their threats. Hopefully their reputation precedes them. Or at least their big fat mouth in the present gives them away.

When I first decided to sell my two biggest tractors, I advertised them for "$15000.00US or best offer". The phone rang in my first shop on the farm. It was a guy from Minnesota. "I'm interested in your two Cockshutt tractors. I'll give you $11000.00US for them". That was way low. I paid $11000.00US for the one. For the pair? Nope, not happening. 

"Ok, thanks, but I won't sell them for that. I'm going to have to wait for a better offer". 

"What?! That's my best offer! Your ad said you'd sell them for $15000.00 or best offer! That's my best offer!" 

Just all over me, right from the start. Angry and pushy and huffy. Somehow in his mind only his best offer counted, not anyone else's. That's some position to be in. Must be nice...

"That's only your best offer. I'm going to wait for others".

He yelled back at me, "Who gave you the right to an auctioneer?!" 

"The fact that they're my tractors and I can sell them for whatever I want gives me the right". 

"Fine! I'll see to it that you never sell a tractor South of the Border again!" And down goes the phone. 

That same old threat. Boy oh boy. It's almost like a broken record with those types. Brenda heard the conversation on speaker phone and got anxious. "What are you going to do? Did you hear what he said?" She was more worried about my parts business than selling tractors.

"Yeah, I heard. I've heard that before. Don't worry." Just another browbeating creep, used to getting his own way, and when he doesn't, out come the exact same threats. "He wants those tractors. You can't find a Cockshutt 2050 and a 2150 in a package deal anywhere and he knows it. He'll call back with a different approach. Just watch." 

Sure enough, not 15 minutes went by, and the phone rang again. Same number. Whole different attitude on my end now. "Hello?" Not my most welcoming voice. In fact, it had a bit of a low, slow growl in it. 

"Yeah, this is ***** ******. It seems we got off on the wrong foot in our first conversation". No kidding. And no apology either. Notice it was "we" that were out of line, not him. "I'd like to buy your tractors. What is it going to take for me to get them?"

I replied, "There is absolutely nothing you can do to get them now. You could offer me the full fifteen thousand dollars and you still wouldn't get them. As a matter of fact, you'll never get them". Matter of fact and cool as a cucumber. 

A little nervous laughter on his end. He definitely wasn't used to that. "Why not?"

"Because you're a friggin' jerk!" 

This time it was me that hung up the phone. With great satisfaction, I might add. You don't always have to wait for a situation to right itself. Sometimes you can right it yourself in short order. I don't know if I ever actually called anyone a jerk in business before, but that guy had it coming and I have never for one moment regretted it. I wonder how many times in person he just intimidated himself to a one-sided deal? 

The crowning jewels of his collection were never going to happen and he had only himself to blame.

At supper at Brenda's parent's place, the subject of that heartwarming little phone exchange came up. I related how it went, and said I told him he was a jerk and hung up. Brenda's Mom couldn't believe it because I'm normally a pretty soft-spoken gentleman. She was aghast at the thought of me actually saying something like that. It sounded like an exaggeration for me to her. "You didn't?!" 

Brenda lowered her fork from her mouth and nodded her head slowly and affirmatively with her eyes meeting her Mom's, "Oh yes he did..." Emphatic. Her Dad replied that he had that coming after the way he jumped down my neck right off the hop. He didn't see a thing wrong with it. I didn't either, and not really even much today. Maybe the jerk learned a lesson. Well, probably not... but let's call it a win for all the other people collectively he pulled that same garbage with.

A customer from Nova Scotia used to give us a hard time every time he bought parts. He never would do things by the book. It always had to be his way. Kim's books weren't set up to do it his way and it always threw her off and messed them up. The books for an international business with two different currencies are very complicated, and no extra complexity is required or appreciated. She only had exactly enough columns in her ledgers and his other way of paying messed it all up. Well, once again, instead of doing it our way, he demanded to do it his. He sent a cheque instead of paying for it on the website like everybody else. Guess what? Because we didn't do that, the cheque got misplaced, so we didn't send his parts. 

He called up while I was at the Post Office one damp Autumn morning and was just raging at Kim: "Tell your Danny... "

"He's not my Danny".

I had arrived back, and she was fielding his incessant ranting. Apparently she had been on the phone with him almost since I left. I went to take the phone from her. She refused and turned away from me, keeping it out of my reach. She didn't have him on speaker so I couldn't hear what he was saying, just her responses. "He's not my Danny..."

She finally politely excused herself and hung up the phone. She turned to me and said, "I couldn't let you hear the things that guy was saying about you. You would have lost your $h|+ right there and I knew it wouldn't be good. He's a ******* @$$hole!" She was just livid and she had every right to be.

Kim went on to say that guy was telling her that, for us losing his cheque, he was going to sue me out of business. Out of existence. He was going to own Import Tractor Parts, he was going to own my farms, and he was going to own my house and shop, and I would never have anything to my name again as long as I lived. All that over misplacing a $118.00 cheque! It's not that we cashed it and didn't send him his parts. We didn't have a cent from him. 

Now, this guy was Canadian, and he was threatening some extremely heavy duty legal action, so I was a little concerned. 

I went to see my lawyer to get his take on it. He told me no court in the land would entertain such a thing because we hadn't exchanged any money whatsoever. We lost the cheque, not cashed it, so no money had changed hands. This was a 'no harm, no foul' type of thing, keeping it from being a legal issue. I was afraid of having to repeatedly go to Nova Scotia to defend myself against this raving lunatic. My lawyer reassured me he couldn't even get his own Provincial court system to table a suit for that if it happened there, but the loss of the cheque occurred here. He would have to pursue such a notion here in Ontario, and he would be immediately stymied here after wasting the time and money of trying. He would never try if he asked a lawyer. The courts have real issues to deal with every day, not perceived ones from blowhard idiots who just didn't get their own way and are out to punish someone for it.

Kim eventually found the cheque. It had slipped off the back edge of her desk down in between the upright piece of it and the wall. She wanted to mail it back to him with a very heartfelt insulting message, but I said no. Not that he didn't deserve it, but let sleeping dogs lie. Something better will come up. She entered him in her "A**hole List" that she kept for difficult or scammy customers so we could avoid future hassles with them. He was entered at the top of her list as 'The King of the A**holes!'. That should tell you pretty well everything you need to know about his character and our experience with him.

Knowing better than to call for parts himself, he set one of his employees to call for him later on. I'm not a shoot the messenger kind of guy, so I was nice to the employee. No hard feelings there. In fact, I'd automatically feel sorry for anyone working for that control freak. The parts he wanted for his White 1470 just so happened to unfortunately not be available. No rudeness, just "sorry, we don't have them". Not for him, anyway. We were the only game in town for those parts and that jackass good and well knew it.

I'm Scottish and not apt to forget something like what he put us through. Not just the nuisance he made of himself up until that point, but the fact that I had to visit my lawyer to put my mind at ease about his rabid foaming at the mouth litigation threats. Years went by and that guy was indeed dumb enough to call me for parts again. Himself. This time is was a beautiful late summer's afternoon. His voice was happy go lucky, all jolly and well. Pip pip and all that rot. 

"I remember you".

"You do?"

"Yeah, I sure friggin' do. The last time you called you threatened to sue me out of my home, my farms, and my business. I don't take too kindly to something like that". 

"No, I'd never do a thing like that... " Perish the thought... Nonsense. tsk tsk... Never happened.

"Yeah, you sure friggin' did, and don't try lying to me about it. I have a long memory for that kind of thing. Get this and get this good: I don't care what you want or what you need it for, you're never going to get it here. I won't sell you anything, no matter how bad you need it, got it? Now take your browbeating friggin' bull$h|+ and go somewhere else." *click* 

My, that was satisfying, wasn't it? I didn't even have to pay for a postage stamp for it. It was on his dime. He got to hear my voice wholeheartedly saying it, too. And he couldn't sue me for that either. I'm a tractor guy through and through. I don't like customers not being served and tractors not getting repaired, or especially standing in the way of that happening, but his 1470 can rot into the ground for all I care. I just smiled as I thought of the carpet ripped out from underneath another one that was used to bullying and threatening his way to an end. And there wasn't a darn thing he could do about it. 

I messaged Kim and let her know what happened. Her reply? "Awesome. Sweet... He was the ultimate d**k... U did the right thing. Good 4 u". No, good for us, because he made her life miserable as well.

Don't ever allow selfish, narcissistic people to beat you into a corner. Let them paint themselves into their own. They'll huff and they'll puff, but guess what? It'll all blow over - on them - in time. 

I don't really relish revenge, because that is not ours, but I do thoroughly enjoy sweet justice, and I definitely saw that as justice served.

This is not about having the upper hand all the time. Nothing could be further from the truth. I'm not that guy or even that kind of guy. For me, every day is a struggle, with its own challenges. These are the standouts; the memorable, rare victories that are cherished and savoured when they come. The rest of the time I do my best to just roll with the punches. I'm generally the underdog, but every dog does indeed have its day and I'm living proof of that as well. Use the rare victories as fuel to keep crawling over the obstacles. 

Being a Winner and triumphing over everyone I meet isn't even a pipe dream because it isn't even a desire. I know people like that and I absolutely, positively do not want to be like them. Being like that means being one of the characters I referred to in this piece, and that's the last thing I will ever aspire to be. Guaranteed, any one of them could buy and sell me like a baseball card, but to what end? Nobody that knows them likely trusts or Respects them. I almost always capitalize the word 'Respect', because I think it is the highest aspiration you can strive for: Not other people's money; other people's Respect. 

When Sharon looks at me, and says, "I love you", and I can see her soul trying to crawl out of her eyes to get to me, I know I have won the greatest thing I could ever ask for. Yes, the eyes are truly the windows to the soul. Nothing else matters in this world but one person genuinely loving you. No amount of money can replace that. One time another Fast Eddy was trying to steamroll his way over me to get his own way and actually stooped to trying to turn Sharon against me to get her on his side. He did that by writing a letter to me that called me everything under the sun, and said I didn't deserve a Christian wife like Sharon. Then he actually had the audacity to come to our house to try to continue his cult-like mental manipulation. I thought I was handling him just fine myself at our front door. That was until Sharon realized he was there and she came up behind me. Her right index finger came rocketing past my right ear out the door directed at him, and she snapped, "How dare you try to plant dissention between me and my husband?! Get off of this property this minute and don't you ever come back!" 

That was better than anything I had to say. Far more succinct and effective. I had to keep her behind me. She would have ripped his spleen out through his beak if I would have let her. That angle of his absolutely incensed her. He tried to use her against me, and ultimately against herself because they were her farms as well. He told Christian people I was demonically possessed because I wouldn't give in to selling him our farms for almost half of what they were worth. Yes, he really stooped that low. Absolutely despicable. He used Christianity where it best suited him, and what I'll call 'financiality' with other people who were all about money instead. 

Sharon has repeatedly told me, "I would live in a cardboard box on the side of the road with you". Despite that creep's Dallas TV show-like hostile takeover scheme, times like that are when I know I have won at Life. 

Winning at life more often than not means losing at finances. They are not mutual. That guy actually actively and purposefully went around trying to poison my old neighbours against me when he didn't get his way. He succeeded with quite a few of them, too. Some won't even speak to me anymore. Whatever. Go your own way then. I didn't even try to defend myself. I figured it was pointless and I wasn't going to humiliate myself trying to undo a pack of lies a con artist made people who should have known better believe. The fact that they didn't rate their own experiences with me over up to half a century rather than his heavy one-sided at-all-cost destruction of my reputation for his own financial gain saddened me, but what can you do? Maybe they weren't any real loss if they could write me off that easily and summarily. I spent 25 years defending one pair of their reputations from him only for them to turn against me in one evening when he showed up in their yard to gripe about me not giving into him. I'm truly sorry I wasted my time and effort. They all deserve each other. Rich and greedy and petty and fickle. Their love of money above everything else. They just better hope he doesn't set his sights on something they have or they'll experience the same thing I did. 

If that point comes for them with him it won't be any skin off of my back. And I won't be coming to their aid, either, or give them a shoulder to cry on. It'd be, "Too bad, so sad..." They cast me off and it's good and well going to stay that way. Experiences like that throughout life have resulted in me coming up with the mantra, "More People bring More Trouble". 

When people use me and/or discard me like that, I never look back. At that point it's "Frigg 'em." I mean that emphatically. That is a survival tactic. Maybe a moulded instinct from experience. Allowing them back within your radius of security is just looking for More Trouble. 

Life can be a lonely road. Never let your guard down with people that stuck a knife in your back once before. Their continued company isn't worth the risk associated with it.

These are the kinds of things that make me say winning at life and winning at finances are mutually exclusive. There are good people out there that can win at both, but they are the exception rather than the rule. Most rich people can't be trusted as far as you can throw them. Why do we even use that saying? You throw something to get rid of it. Or them. To put as much distance between them and you as you can. I don't want to be one of those people that others desire to try to throw as far as they can.

In life I'd far rather take the moral high road than the financial one. If you can't face yourself in the mirror, no matter how snazzy your attire and how posh your surroundings, you have indeed lost and need to seriously reassess your direction in life. 

Pick and choose your friends very, very carefully. A few great ones beats the heck out of a lot of sucky ones. Don't be afraid to screen them thoroughly. It may be time well spent. Some won't make the grade while others may prove themselves to be the grade.

Be truthful and humane to others at all times, and you will gain their Respect, and not sacrifice your own. And you will never be like any of the people I have referred to here.