Mind you, I don’t have a temper but I can be provoked. Even that is rare, but from time to time I’ll react surprisingly.

An example was the bridge incident. I was a small boy visiting distant kin in the coastal forest area. On a nature walk  my little brother cut in front of me on a logging bridge then slowed down like some drivers who scramble to get in front of my car then plug up the road. My brother ended up in the creek.

 

Sometimes there isn’t any ill will on my part, just immediate action.

I worked for a man who had means and was used to winning. We both transported employees to a business luncheon and on the return there were a few miles of freeway. It was his habit to race back to the office and he had no concern about speed limits and such. Not being a racer, I was a strategy driver.

 

My strategy placed me in the lead at one point and to my surprise I got a call on my little motorola V60. The familiar voice of my boss said in dead serious earnest, “you had better let me get ahead!”

I thought, “Fine. He can ‘win’.”

 

But then he maneuvered his vehicle so that I could not rejoin the right lane to make the exit toward the interstate bridge, leaving me vulnerable to miss that exit and add half an hour to the normally short trip. Traffic to my rear would not allow me to get behind his car and he wouldn’t speed up or slow down to let me over. He sat there grinning at his strategy, so I did what seemed prudent. Rather than lose all that time for my carload of hourly employees, I dropped out of overdrive and floored it. The car took off like a rocket and I found a hole in traffic several cars ahead of the boss just in time. For reasons unknown, I beat him to the office by five minutes. Most likely he slowed down  so that his carload of employees could not witness my passengers getting out of the car that beat their car to work. Like anyone cared.

 

He decided to teach me a lesson.

 

For the next few years, he insisted that I ride with him to the annual luncheon so I “won’t get lost”. However, in stead of me sitting in the front seat as in years past, he put the company attorney there and insisted that I sit as far to the back as possible to be completely ignored. For a couple of years he stuck me in the rumble seat of his SUV, which was not meant for adults. Too small. Finally, realized what he was doing and drove myself.

 

The problem with racers who rig the score is that they really don’t compete by superior performance, they dominate through contrivance. This denies them the satisfaction of earned conquest in favor of brute domination. They get the trophy, so to speak, realizing that most people assume it represents accomplishment. Similar to the cheater who gets the score but not the knowledge. A is A, but an “A” does not necessarily mean an earned “A”. Sorry Aristotle. You were correct, but in this world every correct principle has it’s counterfeit.

 

People with their counterfeit trophies have a tenuous satisfaction, because they know the truth: it’s all image. Clearly, they value the image over the reality because the image is at least attainable and works to con people.

It becomes a life style.

 

The same individual, and I admit I never put this together before now, had built a life largely dependent on such a trade. Rather than build good will upon actual value, he created a lattice of counterfeit offerings. I cut him slack because I’d never seen it done so well and didn’t catch on for a very long time.

 

However, like the woman who discovers that her man is a philandering cad, I was left to marvel later that all the signs were in plain sight.

 

I did see that there were very good benefits to working for him that proved not to be real at all. The large company disbursements promised by virtue of naming me as a key employee only happened for a short time. Quietly that was changed and I was left believing I had a benefit that in reality he reserved only for himself. It did fend off the large company that tried to hire me away and kept me and my talents in the company. On a deception, he won. Not only did I stay, but he provided himself a substantial retirement vehicle by commandeering benefits he built specifically “for” me. Double win.

 

The promise made frequently over a very many years was that I would run the company when he retired. When that time drew near, his actual plan to pass it to his son was revealed. I’d gotten word of the plan years earlier from friends of his but didn’t believe them. It helped retain me while he prepared his sons. By deceiving me, he won.

 

Having grown frustrated with the telecom that provided our phone service at the office, he shopped replacements. After negotiating his deal, he presented me with the contract and demanded that I sign it. I was not an officer in the company and didn’t have any financial responsibility for the service, so I asked the obvious, “you are standing right here. Why would you have me sign your contract for services to your company?”

 

He just snarled, “Sign it” and stood menacingly in wait. Against my better judgement I did.

What happened later was classic, according to one of his sons who said he’d done it many times with personal bills he didn’t feel like paying.

 

Out of the many telephone numbers we used in our phone intensive business, two were inadvertently not converted to the new company for a month. The bills came and he refused them, saying that the phone company knew we were switching to another vendor and should have switched those lines. I told him that we in fact got the use of those lines for the billing period and should pay it. He disagreed and refused so as “to teach them a lesson”. The balance never got paid and I began to get notices from the vendor showing that I was now in collections for the delinquency. The boss told me not to pay. He threatened to fire me if I did. “They’ll never learn otherwise,” he insisted.

 

I asked him, “learn what, that I don’t pay my bills that aren’t actually my bills?” There must be a different reporting vehicle for commercial debt because the item never showed on my personal credit, which the boss believed was proof that it caused no harm to me. It did, however, harm the company who went unpaid and it did chip away at my trust.

So he got out of paying that legitimate debt for services he actually received as contracted. The phone company lost. I lost. Again, it involved deception.  He won.

 

Employees were told in the early years that the vacation benefit would be three weeks paid after five years on the job. He never thought anyone would stay that long and ended up honoring that promise only for a select few who held him to it. To the more timid employees he simply put it this way, “I never promised that.” and he denied them the third week. To keep newer people from knowing, he made certain that the vacation was not identified as such writing. It would have been simpler to admit that new employees were not going to get the benefit, but to openly allow that old timers were getting what was promised. For those to whom it was promised but not delivered, he won.

In his personal life, I am confident there are many similar stories. Too many persons have told me that they wouldn’t recognize the fellow that they saw in action at work as the same one they saw at church. Explaining how devastatingly true that observation is will wait for another time, no doubt resulting from an act of belligerent obstruction.

 

Here is the rub, though. When you’re on the freeway and someone strategically cuts off your options, leaving you only the course they specifically warned you not to take or to be sidelined, then what is the correct action?  Are you bound by their expectation of subservience to dutifully  be short changed or diverted? I think not.

Another obstruction looms ahead, for the familiar ill advised reason. I finally realize what I should have learned years ago.

 

There is no reason to submit to an obstructionist when better options exist. Their “win” is always at your expense.