Thu, 1. July 2010
What's a Friendship Worth?
I was proved wrong when the person I worked for for over twenty years lost all perspective of courtesy and did exactly that! We had enjoyed a decent working relationship and in the mid-nineteen eighties, he offered to give me something that he and his family wished to dispose of. I had not asked for it and I was reluctant to take it initially but he pressured me into accepting it. I was shocked when shortly before he retired he attempted to persuade me to return it. Despite the somewhat intimidating manner he adopted to me as an employee on this occasion, I managed to evade the question but I was privately very annoyed that he was abusing his status as my supervisor, to leverage an outcome against my will.
After several more years had elapsd, I organised a company reunion and he shocked me by again asking for it back. Once more, I listened to him in complete silence without agreeing to his requests. His questions turned into persistent demands and I was stunned when he trotted out the argument that he had “only lent it to me”. I walked away from the conversation at that point, angered and disillusioned by such infantile behaviour from someone I had worked with for so long.
I fully expected that to be the end of the matter – but five months after that conversation, he breached all protocol by lining up his son to call me, to tell me that he was “ringing to arrange a suitable time to come and pick it up”. What brazen audacity! I informed him that the object of his desire was not available and I expected him to respect that. However, he began to question me persistently and argue with my responses. He made it very clear that he wanted to regain possession and I realised that he was treating me like a subordinate - because I once worked for his father. The poor etiquette and lies from the father had become audacity and delusion from the son.
On all three occasions, I refused to get into an argument, because I didn't want to match the lack of respect being dished out to me. However, after being on the receiving end of three distasteful one-sided verbal bullyings, I decide that was the limit of my endurance. I sent my former boss an e-mail making it clear that his tactics were inappropriate and informing him clearly the answer is 'no'. I subsequently learned that he was ill and a few weeks later I was angrily informed by his wife that as a result of my e-mail the 'friendship' was terminated.
The object in question was a masonite panel with a rusty old model train track mounted on it, that wasn't working when I took possession of it and needed to be completely rewired. Over twenty-five years later, my old boss and his family members were prepared to end a 'friendship' over it. It wasn't worth much when he gave it to me, even less now. So now I know the true measure of our thirty year old 'friendship'.