DON’T MESS WITH ME

The Best Revenge is Served Up Cold

He never saw it coming — he knew it was me but he couldn’t prove it

The statute of limitations is long over so I guess it’s now safe to spill the beans on the first time I really got back at someone.

Since our cat Buddy was shot with an air rifle just a few days ago by someone I’ve not yet been able to identify, I’ve been mulling over all the different ways I can get revenge. He suffered a badly fractured back leg and is currently recovering with a splint.

We think he’s going to be OK, but his life is forever changed. I’m still seething with fury. I want this perp to suffer too.

In a case that happened more than twenty years ago, the dude definitely would have sued me but I’m not sure for what. Can you press charges against someone who showed the world they’re a cheater and a dumb ass?

He and his father screwed me out of $25,000, and almost caused me to lose the business I’d spent several years building with my own blood, sweat, and tears.

I started my business in 1990. It was a B2B data research and aggregator of company information used by sales and marketing professionals. In 2014 I pulled the plug on it after a successful 24-year run.

By the time I closed it, there were too many big players doing the same thing I was doing, only cheaper and with more sophisticated tools.

In the early years, I sold several licensing agreements to individuals in other cities, including a regional business journal in Nashville.

Things were going great. My business model got a lot of attention. I was interviewed by Entrepreneur Magazine, Atlanta Constitution, and other regional and national pubs.

I was a guest on the radio show “Let’s Talk Business” in NYC., and on Paul and Sarah Edwards’ show in LA. (The Edwards’ authored the book Getting Business to Come to You, one of the best entrepreneurial resources at that time.)

In time I had my own radio show — The Small Business Roundtable. This was when talk radio was first becoming super popular in this city. The leading television station in Memphis also owned AM and FM radio stations, so I approached them first.

I brought a proposal to the manager of the AM station and he liked it. I signed a one-year contract to host a weekly hour-long radio show devoted to the issues and trends of small businesses.

Each Sunday afternoon I conducted live interviews with entrepreneurs, business owners, marketing specialists and various service providers. It was a fun and instructional show, and to this day I occasionally run across people who remember listening to it.

One Saturday morning at a regional marketing forum, I met a young man who, along with his father, owned a string of real estate companies in Tennessee and six other states. The father-son duo were franchise owners of a well-known real estate brand, and they were looking for other franchise opportunities to invest in.

I’d already thought about looking into franchising my business because it seemed like everyone I met asked me if there were similar types of businesses in other cities.

Franchising seemed complicated and too expensive, and at the moment I was enjoying the local and regional success.

Eventually, I decided the time was right. I entered into a partnership with the father and son, and we formed a corporation that would franchise my business concept into other cities.

They had the franchising experience and start-up capital and I had the idea, the sales and training experience, and a respected, credible background.

The father insisted on making his 26-year-old son (who we’ll call Jon) the CEO. I was named president.

They wanted me to fold my business into the newly formed one which ostensibly seemed to make sense. But a little voice in my head instructed me not to do it. I listened.

We franchised my business model, which included a B2B print directory and a proprietary database. With their franchise sales expertise, we sold franchises in Atlanta, Detroit, Cleveland, Knoxville, Wichita, and five other cities.

A year later, I wanted out. The franchisees were becoming unhappy. Jon hamstrung the business with his arrogance, ignorance, and insistence on doing everything his way.

He was also fixated on doing things on the cheap. As such, the franchisees floundered.

The cheap and dishonest ways Jon stealthily built into the franchise training is what led to my exit.

The franchisees were not being run the way my business was despite the fact I wrote the “how-to” training manual, and I personally worked with them on operations and marketing.

Instead of using the more expensive methods of data collection, which called for using paid researchers to personally phone and update the thousands of business listings like my company did, franchisees were told to buy data that was already several years out of date. Using second and third party aggregators was way less expensive.

I was livid when I found out. Jon, in his typical condescending manner, explained most businesses do not change their addresses or phone numbers each year. Nor does their employee size change that much.

Bullshit. That is absolutely untrue. Dumbass didn’t have a clue what he was pontificating about. Business information changes tremendously from year to year. They move, they grow, they go out of business.

Their names are changed or tweaked. They may have been a sole proprietorship last year but are now a corporation. Phone numbers are added, removed and suite numbers may change too. All of this information is important.

And personnel changes so much within two to three years, it’d be a miracle if even 20% of the three year old data listed key personnel who were current and correct.

“There’s more dead people in that database than Memorial Gardens!” I shouted at Jon during one of our heated exchanges.

Nonetheless, the know-it-all son, whose brilliant idea it was to buy and package ancient business data rather than to pay for updating it, instructed the franchisees to do just that.

When their directories came back from the printer they looked just like mine. The same excellent graphics — the clean plasticoil binding and expensive card stock. The only difference was the quality and the integrity of the data.

Wrong. Totally wrong.

The data integrity was THE most important feature of the directory and databases. That’s what people were buying — nothing else.

I was done.

I won’t detail the long, exhausting, and disappointing story of how they stole over $25,000 in franchise sales earnings that should have been mine. As “president,” I ultimately had little influence and zero access to the bookkeeping and accounting. I’ll just say a sympathetic insider tipped me off, and showed me the books.

As we parted I looked into the rear view mirror and knew I’d dodged a bullet. (I just wish Buddy could have dodged the same.)

Almost a year went by and I was still hot under the collar. I’d been able to salvage my own reputation in the industry but losing the 25 grand still stung.

The franchisees, who I still had excellent relationships with, continued to call for advice. I helped them the best I could. Meanwhile, Jon changed almost all of the operational procedures that had worked for me, but were now causing the franchisees to lose money, and lose hope.

One by one, they threw in the towel, and like me, ended up losing money. I felt horrible about it, but what could I do?

Before I announced my departure I spent a Saturday afternoon at the office the son had rented and had wasted a fortune on. It was a lofty executive-style office in a hip downtown building with way too much space and furnishing for an operation with few employees.

Turnover was absurd. Jon repeatedly hired attractive young women who usually stayed for about a month. He was impossible to work for.

On that Saturday I photocopied reams of information stored in the filing cabinets including every contact the son had — personal, professional, you name it. He collected info on present and past girlfriends, his therapist, his college pals, newer friends and former partners. He was an obsessive collector of personal information.

I photocopied all of it.

An idea popped into my head. It was so wicked, so crazy, so hysterically funny I couldn’t even sleep that night.

Because Jon— who was actually a good-looking guy — was so self-conscious about his slight premature balding, I decided he needed a new franchise company — Balding Information International. BII, for short.

By this time Michael and I had married. Since he’s a graphic artist I laid out my twisted vision for him.

He created an oversized postcard — 5.5" x 8.5" that featured two photos of Jon. Since he’d also stored a ton of pictures of himself it was easy to select one of him smiling broadly and another one with a serious countenance.

Michael photoshopped the serious pic by making him appear as if he were almost totally bald. To the smiling photo, he added some hair, making it look as if the “Majic Karpet Hair Solutions for Men” really worked.

That was the name of his “new” franchise product. My marketing narrative on the postcard read as follows:

“B.I.I., Inc., is now Balding Information Internationa! We have changed our franchising and marketing concept and are determined to reach the ‘top of the market’ in quality men’s hair replacement therapies. B.I.I. is now newly positioned for success with a bold strategic vision and marketing plan. I invite you to join us in this dynamic concept, either as a franchisee (we’re poised for real growth in this recession proof industry!) or as a valued customer.

For more information on becoming a franchise partner with B.I.I., Inc. and Majic Karpet Hair Solutions for Men, call me (his real name) or my assistant Monica Krotchkiz at (his real phone number).”

The Monica Lewinsky affair was still fresh in the public’s memory, so the name Monica Krotchkiz seemed like just the right name. In small print, the photographer was identified as Jack Meoff.

Under the two side-by-side photos the postcard read:

An Impotent Announcement for Men Troubled by Premature Hair Loss… “Even my closest friends didn’t know.”

Of course the word “important” was deliberately misspelled “impotent.”

Anyhoo — I have to laugh every time I think about this — we had 500 postcards printed up and mailed to his immediate neighbors, his father’s neighbors in Florida, his old and new girlfriends, everyone in the building where his fancy office was, and to every contact I found in his office that day.

We also send cards to the local media along with a press release.

As it turns out, we had help in this operation. I let one of the franchisees in on the scheme and he was delighted to lend his assistance.

We mailed the artwork for the postcard to him and he used a printer he was friends with. The friend was told it was a birthday gag for his son’s fraternity pal, and the printer thought nothing of it, except that it was funny.

When I asked the amount of the printing so I could quickly repay him, the franchisee refused. “Deborah, this is genius. No way will I let your fingerprints be anywhere near this. I’m paying and I’m delighted to do so!”

When we received the postcards we applied the computerized name labels and the stamps to them. We donned latex gloves.

The next move was to get them in the mail.

A friend of mine was an international quality control manager for Holiday Inns. That week she was off to Los Angeles for a three-day work week and then back to Memphis.

She loaded the cards into a small carry-on, and the next day she mailed them from a Post Office in Burbank.

Mission accomplished!

At home, I kept checking the local papers hoping something would appear about the “new business.” Most likely astute eyes caught the joke and trashed the card and press release.

All but one. We’d mailed the card to the hosts of an early morning classic rock radio show. Their early drive-time banter was legendary. About a week after my friend mailed the cards from L.A. she called me in a lather.

“Turn on 103, turn on 103, right now…they’re calling Jon!”

I turned it on and sure enough, the two jocks were yucking it up and guffawing about Majic Karpet Hair Solutions for Men.

“Dawg, I thought this was real!”

“No, dawg, eat my shorts! Ain’t real….lookit, see the crotch kiss, dawg?”

“Can we say that, dawg?”

“Hella I dunno, I’m buggin’ out, dude…. lookit, Mr. Jack….uh-oh, here’s me ‘paging Mr. Meoff’!”

“You mean, Mr. Jack Meoff?” Har har har har…..!!!

“Dawg, ya can’t say that, dawg! We’re on the freaking radio!”

Yeah. Just think. Back in those days we boomers thought that shit was hysterical. Booya!

That morning, I thought it was hysterical too. I screamed for Michael and we turned up the radio as loud as it would crank.

Five minutes of dawg this and dawg that, and they finally phoned Jon at the number I’d thoughtfully provided. I knew he wasn’t an early riser so I was surprised he even answered the call.

After the jocks’ build up Jon was anti-climatic. In a groggy voice, he asked who the hell they were. They almost managed to bleep out the word hell but not quite. Remember, this was the nineties.

Because he was so disorientated Jon didn’t realize at first he was live on Rock 103 but after about 90 seconds he cursed again and slammed down the phone.

The jocks roared with laughter, declaring that the postcard prank was one of the best they had ever seen.

“Dawg, dawg, whoever did this, he almost had me. He’s like, you know, he is da bomb!”

“I know, dawg, I know!

It felt so good….so satisfying.

Did he know it was me? Of course he knew. Could he prove it? Hell no.

Three months later I learned Jon had sold his expensive downtown home and had moved back to live near his father.

The actual phrase is: “Revenge is a dish best served cold.” It’s attributed to several people. From The Godfather to a 1846 translation of Eugène Sue’s Mathilde: Mémoires d’une Jeune Femme lots of people have claimed credit.

If you want to know why I’m pissed and want revenge served up — cold or otherwise — read below.

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