Be Careful that Petty Meanness not your last deed

An Illustrative Story from my Past about a Colleague

I was just reading in the local paper about a public works director who was fired for accepting a trip from a company that markets devices that would be under his purvey. As a probationary employee he has no due process protection from the firing and therefore is suing. It is especially interesting because he claims he told his superior about the trip before it took place, and the vendor is someone with no ties to the county (they do not market their devices as yet, so there was no tit for tat in this incident).

I am totally against bribery, graft and cronies (and in fact I believe it is one of the key downfalls of the United States as a whole) but come on, let’s keep it real. This guy went on a trip two states over (here in the South), had a hotel, a meal and a football game (it’s the football game they are particularly mad about). Meanwhile the “Superbowl “is entirely a corporate event for the high rolling connections, Iraq contractors are 100 percent connected via political and business figures, and payola is everywhere throughout this country. You cannot get even the lowest level job without being connected to someone with secret influence and money/power is the ways and means. Yet this guy is front page news in our paper for taking a “getting to know a company” trip and going to a football game on their dime, so to speak, and has to sue (clog the courts) to get his side of the story heard and evaluated.

It reminded me of an incident in my life that is well worth sharing for consideration by people who might wrap their personal meanness in “being honest and virtuous.” Twenty five years ago I worked for what was the largest oil company at the time. It was my first time working for a major corporation. I liked it even though they made a lot of bad decisions. In those days I believed that good people should work from within corporations and not abandon the ship. For example there were many personal environmentalists in this company even though at the time this company was notoriously anti-environmental in deed. And it did make a difference over the years, though I was gone before I could see the change personally, and they had to go pretty far down before they reformed their morals.

There was an interesting assembly of people who worked there, as this was a diverse and global company. I was responsible for a small part of the computer center in the communications area, and managed several programmers, and had responsibility for two vendors of equipment. I had colleagues who were peers, who likewise controlled small groups of programmers responsible for sections of equipment or applications. We worked for Section Heads and were generally Senior Project Analysts.

Anyway, one of my peers, I’ll call him Dave E., was somewhat iconoclastic. He was prickly, territorial, and a mister knows it all with a big mustache, if you know what I mean. That was kind of a type of the early 1980’s. I think he had a wife and children, and wondered how he was at home. Sometimes people are jerks at work and wonderful parents and spouses at home, though that is less common now, much less common, than that possibility was back then.

One day, soon in my taking over responsibility for my group, I was called to the lobby in order to meet my vendor visitor and escort him to my office. That was the security arrangement then, where you had to walk to the lobby and actually bring your visitor to your office. This guy had just taken over the account for his company. Anyway, I was stunned to walk in the lobby and see that he had a dozen classic red roses in a bouquet for me. Turns out he knew it was my birthday around that time. I’ll never forget how great that felt because truth-be-known, I’d never received a dozen classic long stem red roses before (and I have not since then). Now in the 1980’s this was not exactly a fortune and it was really the thought that counted.

Within a day or so Dave E expressed his outrage to me. He frostily informed me that there is a $25 gift limit and that I either should not have accepted the roses, or should report them. I told him that I was fully aware of it and good grief, how much did he think a bouquet of roses cost? (I may not have received them before but I sure bought them for people so I knew well the prices). He was unmollified and tried to make a big stink about it, but obviously this was not a concern of the world’s largest oil company at the time LOL, especially since I was within the rules anyway. And it was hardly a state secret because everyone else got a kind chuckle out of the look on my face when I got those roses in the lobby.

Well. Not so long after that Dave E came down with a terminal illness and died.

People were shocked and saddened, though few people, especially me who was a newcomer, knew much about his family or had a personal connection to him.

Now, this was a young guy with a family. What did his personal meanness toward me merit him?

How does anyone know when they will be called, and to an accounting of how they spent their time and generosity? Will the Lord thank people for being spiteful about flowers, or a football game? Don’t bet on it.

Remember that Anna Nicole Smith AND the son of her ex-husband both died before either gained a dime of the enormous money they both fought so bitterly over, and this spite and lack of generosity was the punctuation to both of their lives. And perhaps this spite contributed to their mutual demises.

Spite, jealousy, pettiness and hubris are not only ungodly, but they should not be counted on as life extending traits. Nor can they be disguised, like perfuming the pig, as being steadfast and honest.