What’s the nastiest thing you’ve done for revenge?
Short:-
after a period of judgemental abrasiveness, you accuse me of not being able to hold a job. Just over two years down the road, you message about whether I’m still working during the worst of the Covid-19 lockdowns. Knowing that you are down (yet again) and looking for cash flow succour, I cut you off blocking your numbers!
Long, read on:-
[August 2008, for the September month fees payable in advance]:
“… I’ve spoken to my association members about your case and you are definitely not cooperative. You pay the remaining $X amount in cash by noon the day after tmro or we don’t need you in our classes and ranks.”, stated the martial arts master who was a known hard-ass with a growing history of trouble making ends meet. I was going through a tough patch myself and I suspect that my inability to pay my monthly subscriptions in advance that month after my negotiated prepayment package ended a few months earlier had riled him thoroughly. I think that was the main reason he was sneaking chances to bat at the walls with his knuckles uncharacteristically during class that evening. Just 1 guy unable to pay his dues ahead of time!
Got through that period without being ex-communicated but from the 2nd half of September, I stopped showing up for any classes till the following year when he called about a facilitators gig for the spouses’ association of a large company. Frankly, I was occupied and indifferently passed the first gig but he called again about another pending gig being confirmed. That one went okay but I would be sinking my efforts into some enterprising pursuits over the next 4–5 years, returning sporadically from late 2014 till end ‘16.
At this juncture, he got lucky and needed some facilitators with experience to undertake a few such gigs. That was quite a bit of fun except for the ‘bite’ of his personality (marital, financial and health challenges, which could see him turn positively nasty). Except that it would be more than a year before I would see any payment for those gigs which he claimed were paid through a training provider. Allegedly, rounds of delays followed and he claimed that the company was messing with him about those payments.
In retrospect, I postulate that he been in real financial trouble through the consequences of a divorce, child support, getting cheated on side deals which are ofter the experiential hallmark of somebody who is really down on life. Incidentally, I do not accept that as a valid excuse when he also claimed to have at least one side business to sustain him if training classes got suspended or something. When I diplomatically brought up the question of payment for the bunch of gigs fully 13 months after the last one, he accused me of not being able to hold down a job.
[This is important for later]
I stated firmly, that it was now more than 12 months since the series of gigs were performed and unless that training provider was facing insolvency, there was no excuse for them not to have paid Him to date and payments as rightfully due to us being passed on. This was a deliberate face-saving gesture on my part but I was now beginning to regard him as a question mark, whether I’m worthy of having such a character for a master or what (they’re plenty nowdays who have earned their stripes the hard way, if you know where to look, so…).
(Dis)satisfied that he knew I would be getting on this case again before long, I called him again 45 days after he took the bait, saying that he will ‘get back to the Company’ and have all of us paid. He then demanded to know which training gigs I was involved in, duration and any differentials in the promised daily rates. Heck, what did you do with your training activity journal, man?
Folks, this is where bookkeeping and housekeeping can come in handy, let me tell you. ‘Cos what was eventually banked in to me was one gig short. I’d repeatedly noticed that the master did use a calculator when dealing with significant amounts of cash, so I stewed for an hour maybe less, then decided that under no circumstances would I attend his classes anymore. Good thing that one half-day gig I performed for him between that 45 day delay was promised and paid in cash. Unpleasant circumstances ex post facto suggested that it would be the last in a looonngg time, too.
In December last year, I bumped into him at a place he was formerly known to hangout and he immediately began complaining about a certain new licence of his getting suspended after a couple of complaints (not that someone like him should open shop!) and I believe that he lost his licence and was forced to eat losses from the shutdown.
Since ‘17, I had not been involved in any classes with him and one of the feeder colleges that yielded most of his students relocated some distance away. Small matter that he stated quite arrogantly in passing that another faraway college had appointed him to manage one of their proposed martial arts clubs for the new semester. Covid-19 reared its head and by March, there was a semi-lockdown across everything that was not legally defined as an essential service including colleges and extracurricular activities!
Lying low, I received a message from him via a new, undisclosed number. Basically, he had garnered some share of harassment from others over the years, brusquely covering for himself about some preferred combination of numbers as he changed phone numbers twice while giving up a second phone line in the process. “How are you keeping, bro? Are you working now?” Unable to determine his identity initially, I delayed reading the message, deleting it once I’d had breakfast the next morning.
I then called a mutual friend who had been a bar security guy years ago and asked if master was in trouble again. Confirming the number as his, the friend was clearly unhappy with most of his interactions with master over the past eight months to a year as no one puts a rabid complainer on a pedestal while he runs through a laundry list of imaginary grieviances against whoever got selected mentally at random in their presence.
The friend also noticed that master’s demeanour had become increasingly negative and ‘offensively defensive’ towards all of his after hours comrades and buddies since mid-’18 with no apparent personal problems driving his new found behaviour. He declined to state what complaints master had made against me but I knew what I was going to do if he messaged me again.
“How are you keeping, bro? Are you working now?”. I kept this second identical message unread till the second noon following this (the day after tomorrow, remember?) Then, I deleted it, blocking him in the process thinking to myself,”… I no longer attend your classes and know that I cannot offset any debt from you through packaged or monthly fees… moreover you have been unable to resolve a repeating pattern of a personal problem since ‘07, and I don’t need you crawling out of the 4G airwaves asking for a handout!”
His ex-bar security friend pretended to commisserate in grief over the ‘break up’ (Harharhar - save for December, I’d not seen or spoken to him since asking for my delayed payment the second time) that I initiated. I wonder where I’d stand with him today if he never had any money problems from the day I first called him 14 years ago? Oh well, high time to move on.