She's Just Like Me

Sometimes I wish I could just let slights go...especially in business. Alas, I can't.

Years ago, D1 had a school friend whose Dad was a TV lawyer. I met him at a party, and told him my firm received cases from TV guys and made the TV guys lots of money. The fellow, who I'll call Neal, since that's his name, was interested. I invited him to meet Paul and me for lunch Downtown.  He agreed.

Neal was a tall, good looking guy, but very nerdy. His partner Jack was the shorter brains of the outfit -- he appeared in the TV ads trying to sound like a tough aggressive lawyer but coming off more like an insurance salesman.

Anyway -- we took Neal out, and gave him the full press. He was from Philly, like my partner, and they shared tales of growing up as Boomers there. And then...nothing.

I guess they just didn't like the cut of our jib, as the saying goes. I followed up several times, but no cases came. That should have been that.

But it wasn't. Another pair of TV lawyers had sent a case where a young child drowned at a family pool. They were going to settle it for the $100 K of homeowner's coverage, but asked us to give a second opinion. I figured out the case, without going into details, and won a multi million dollar settlement. The co counsel fee to our TV guys was, as I recall, nearly half a million.

I took a copy of the check, blacked out the payees, and sent it to Neal with a note saying "Your name could be here!" Send us business!  I never heard from him again.

Well, D1 is her father's daughter. She recently submitted a proposal to an expensive private school. The parents pay $30K per year for their kids to attend, and they have zero nutrition education. So D1 met with the principal, explained how it was critical these days (the school probably has scores of kids with eating disorders -- it's an epidemic among, especially, rich girls). The principal said while D1 was welcome to volunteer, hiring a dietitian to consult "wasn't in the budget."

Now, later on in the telling, D1 shared with me that the principal was, to say it nicely, morbidly obese -- so to me that might have something to do with her philosophy about hiring nutrition experts. D1 never fat shames, unlike her beloved, late Grandma Sunny, who, despite being zaftig much of her life, really had a problem with overweight people. When D1 said she was going into Dietetics, Grandma said "Oh -- she'll be great. I mean, she's thin. Who's going to take food advice from some big, fat horse?"  I really miss Mom...

Anyway, D1's reaction was exactly the same mine was with TV Neal.  "The NOIVE of 'dem!" as Curly might say.

I convinced her though, to refrain from the snarky letter like I sent. Instead, it was a polite "thanks for your time" and "I'm here for you if the budget changes...or you hire a less corpulent principal."  I made up the last part...

D1 is learning more and more about baseball, since her biggest client is a local team. She will soon get that even the finest hitters fail 2/3 of the time. It's just the way it goes.

I still see Jack on TV shilling for cases. He and Neal really should have done business with us...