$500 Mistakes

I’ve made a number of $500 mistakes in my life.  One time, I let a guy convince me that he would pay for my airfare to come see him.

The most recent one involved trusting a company to be honest and upstanding when it came to paying the commissions I was due.  It became a long-standing argument which I have mentioned before.  I am bewildered why they would think that someone would want to continue working for them when they hadn’t gotten paid in six or so months, and why they were so offended when I would bring it up again and again.  Of all the labors of love in the world, did they really think that slinging high-end barbecues was one of mine?

It’s hard to not to take it personally when someone (or some entity) screws you over like this.  As a Leo, I have a fiery temper (though I try to keep it under wraps!) and one trigger is always disrespect.  In both of these instances, the people who screwed me over thought that their time or money was more valuable than mine. And, I’m sure in their heads, it is.

In this latter case, it has taken all the maturity in me to keep from naming them by name and writing a scandalous article for consumerist.com.  I have about fourteen unpublished blog entries where I recount how terrible of a company they are, how they don’t value their employees/contractors, and how they honestly don’t value their customers, provide very good customer service (except once in awhile) or even have that great of a product.  Indeed, I can justify spreading the word about them as a way of warning others who might get screwed over in a similar vein if I don’t!

But ultimately, that’s not who I am.  As hard as it might be and as much maturity as I have to magically pull from thin air, I choose not to be the mudslinger.  I trust that the universe will give them their due in whatever form it sees fit.  And, as I said in my final email to them, I appreciate the tough lesson that often times the bottom line for a company has nothing to do with treating their employees well or rewarding them for going out of their way.

Every $500 mistake comes with a valuable lesson.  It’s just hard sometimes to look at it that way.