TIGblogs - Bitsy

I have marveled over the years, in my own tired and life-worn state, at what seems like an inexhaustible wealth of energy that people have found to tap into to fuel their hatred or to perpetuate what seem to be unproductive and empty arguments and pointless debates, not for the purpose of progress or unity, but just for the purpose of discharging anger or some other negative emotions, perhaps to divide and sow the seeds of anger and resentment. There are just a couple of people I see like this writing posts on TIG discussion boards, who bring me to wonder where did all of my own energy go and how are they able to carry what seems to be the energy of a perpetual explosion within them, while I cannot even muster up the energy to fight for myself when I am wronged, let alone to cling to and hold fast to all manners of negative thoughts and feelings and fights against thousands and thousands of people the world over who I will never even know personally. I am no saint and I can be critical and judgmental when the inclination takes me and in a moment or a time period, I may get negative feelings, thoughts or inclinations inside of me towards a person or group of people, but, like a candle reaching the end of its wick, the rage or anger I may have momentarily mustered up is snuffed out quickly, as I surrender to my tired heart and mind.

Recently, in the past two weeks, I have been embroiled in a situation with a Finnish woman and her Greek husband which has caused me to marvel, though weakly and tiredly, at the energy contained in people who cling to their anger and hatred.

Last spring I delivered a large translation job to a Finnish woman and her Greek husband which I sort of did as a favor, albeit with a negotiated payment, because a friend of mine asked me to and told me this couple had a translation of the same text and they weren't happy with the result. I saw the result of the first translation job, for which they had paid 350 euros, and it was awful, shamefully so. This couple were friends to my friend, thus I presumed that my friend knew the couple sufficiently well.

The subject matter of the translation job in question was the English web pages for an apartment in Athens, Greece which the Finnish woman hires out to tourists. My friend was designing the web pages for the couple and had asked me if I would translate the pages from Finnish into English for them. My friend sent me what he and I both understood to be the full text for translation. The husband of the Finnish woman and I came to an agreement on the phone concerning the sum of money which I would be paid for my work: 900 euros net. After agreeing on this price (modest for the amount of translation work), I agreed with the husband to take this payment in the form of one week at the apartment in Athens and one plane ticket to Athens, which, in total, would have amounted to slightly less than 900 euros.

I spent nights and weekends and the full Easter holiday completing the job I had agreed to do. In the meantime, the wife of the man began sending me changes to parts of the text I had already completed and additional texts which she wanted me to translate which had not been considered in the price negotiation. As I do not enjoy my job, largely due to the fact that the texts I have to translate seem to be written by uneducated or careless people who are not literate enough to express themselves comprehensibly in their own language, and as I had scheduled out my time for this work, on top of my full-time job and understood it to be only a short-term commitment, I did not want to do additions or changes, even with extra payment.

During the past summer, after agreeing to make and making an agreed amount of changes and additions to her text, the woman sent many more pages, additions and changes for me to translate and I simply became angry. During that time, the woman wrote in one email that she began to have the inclination to pay me monetarily, since I was becoming so upset.

Just prior to August, she and I again came to an agreement; I would do all the additions that she was sending me and the changes, provided she sent them to me in their FINAL Finnish form and she said we would renegotiate the price later.

I went away for one week on vacation and upon my return, there was an email waiting for me from the woman, in which she told me she has bought two more apartments in Athens in the same building and "we" have to go through the entire 60-odd pages of text changing all of the sentences relating to the apartment to the plural, plus add the information about the additional apartments.

This was the straw that broke the camels back, so-to-speak, and I wrote back angrily telling her she cannot keep reneging on agreements she makes with me by changing the quantity and quality of the work I agree to do and I ended it just by saying I don't know what to do about the situation anymore.

After months passed with no response from her, I understood it was her intention to leave things open-ended like that, to not compensate me in any way for the work I had professionally completed and delivered in April. I knew I had to do something about the situation, because I needed and still need the money they owe me, yet I realized they were not only cheap, but dishonest and untrustworthy.

Anyway, to the present. About 2 or 3 weeks ago, I sent a too-polite email to the couple, giving them my bank account number, asking them to pay me. The woman's husband called me immediately from Greece to renegotiate a price. I always hated that he would only deal on the phone with me, and they seemed to have a system where the man did the payment negotiations and only by phone. It was a quick phone call in which the man and I agreed on 700 euros net. I would have been happy with that, as I thought I would never see a penny for the work I did. I knew the couple would never pay me if they had to pay taxes on top of my salary payment. Anyway, the very same night, the woman sent me a most angry and hostile email, such that I became so upset that I couldn't finish reading it and began crying. She said, among other things, that her husband was in too generous a mood on the phone and she demanded my tax card so she could deduct taxes from the 700 euros. I called my friend who had been doing their web pages and told him I forwarded the woman's email to him and that the woman was furious at me and demanding my tax card to pay taxes on the 700 euros (which would have left me with roughly 450 euros), which she insanely had already paid to my account. [In Finland, you must have the employee's tax card before you can pay the salary and deduct taxes from the salary, yet the woman paid the 700 euros without having my tax card and then told me to send her my tax card "in case my company falls under the eye of the tax authorities." (I later found out that she actually works as a tax authority.)]

Anyway, I took the woman's email to a lawyer, only to find out that she wrote very devious and lying things in her email, lies, designed to protect herself. Also, after reading the email, my friend became disgusted with this couple and wrote a very good email to them about my work and many other things, defending me. I felt good after he did that and understood that I didn't do anything wrong to that woman, even though she was so furious at me. In truth, I and my friend had become both quite fed up with this couple and felt they were taking advantage of us. He informed them in his email that he was finished with them and that if they had ever had any intention of paying him, they should give me his money. He also suggested they pay me the 900 plus pay the taxes on top of that.

Anyway, once I pulled myself together, I realized what I had to do. I had to write a proper bill to the couple, do things properly and legally, return the 700 euros, which felt like dirty money to me. The woman must have thought, that because we both did things illegally, I would try to hide what I did and protect myself, so she would not get in trouble either and so she could manipulate me. I am not like that, though, and I never entered this situation with any devious or dishonest intention to cheat the government by not paying taxes, like this couple does regularly. I know when I make a mistake and I want to say it, pay for it and be freed of it. So, I transferred the 700 euros the woman paid to my bank account back to her bank account, sent her a bill for 1,375 euros (which would give me 900 euros after taxes are deducted) and a very formal and legal-sounding letter explaining certain things openly dealing with the truth, which she had twisted beyond recognition in her email.

I knew the woman would become furious…and…maybe I made the bill for 900 euros instead of 700 specifically to piss her off even more. I knew that it didn't matter if I asked for 700 + taxes or 900 + taxes, they would never pay either one. Her response was – well, first her more level-headed husband called me on the phone again. This time I said I am not negotiating anything on the phone anymore. Then the woman's response to my letter was, as always, swift and emotional, full of anger, vindictiveness and hatred and apparently she sent an email to my friend as well, equally poisoned with her wrath. In earnest, I did not have the emotional or mental strength to read or decipher her Finnish hatred. My friend says her Finnish is incomprehensible, and both she and he are Finnish.

What I did read, is her short email message to me, drenched with a bitterly threatening tone: "Dear Lucia, think very carefully, and think it over again and again, before you answer me!" And she had attached a 5-page "letter" of sorts to the email, in her Finnish and in very small font. I had not the energy or will to read it. In fact, many times in the months of dealing with this couple, I had thought I wish they would just leave me the hell alone. I forwarded this 5-page "manifesto" to my Finnish friend. He glanced at it and told me what was in it, basically, the woman's account of things, her (wrong) understanding of what her husband and I had originally agreed on the phone as my payment, and apparently a lot of stuff about taxes, which I can't imagine has anything to do with the situation.

I had pondered what I should do about this situation. With my letter and bill, I felt I had come clean about my mistake and I did things properly, legally, simultaneously knowing that there was not a snowball's chance in hell that the woman would pay me 700 or 900 euros with taxes on top of that. Somehow, I imagined she would receive my letter and bill, simply not pay the bill, thus making herself a clear criminal, while I would have my clean conscience, my peace of mind, but not a penny of the money she owed me.

I realized that I might be able to win this battle, because she is so insane with rage that she has not a thread of rationality left in her. She has a mind that is twisted to protect and hide her devious nature, while I know the truth of what happened and I haven't the energy or mental capacity to spend spinning and maintaining webs of lies, half-lies or the like – I just know what happened, which means I know the wrong I did too, but since I don't have the inclination to cover it up, or the energy to work at keeping it covered, I confess and pay the price for it. This means I also have the truth on my side and I may have the intelligence and skill of articulation to cause her to be held openly accountable for her devious actions. At the same time, I simply haven't the energy or will to expend on carrying it through. Under the best of circumstances, I hate fighting, whether I am right or wrong. This time is particularly bad for me, because I am planning a trip to Tunisia where I will meet my future husband and I am feeling so good about that. There is, however, much work for me to do to plan the trip and this situation continues to ruin the anticipation and impede my planning for the trip.

I am so affected, if not by the woman's personal rage towards me, then by the concept of a person who has sold her soul to cling to her money and bitter vengefulness, her hatred, so desperately that she has forfeited all that matters in life. She traded integrity, humility, her conscience, peace of mind, among countless other priceless things, to keep her money and an illusion of pride. I realized that she needs this money so much more than I do, because it is all she has, and when she dies, she will just have her vindictiveness and hatred, and she will not be in a happy place.

So this is how I answered her email:

What I want??? How about this – you and your husband just leave me alone. There are many things more important in life than money and it has become clear to me that you have already willfully thrown away most of them, and since you have shown that you will go to any length to keep as much money as you can get away with, you need it more than I do. You can have your money, your anger and your deviousness and I will have my good conscience, my integrity and my peace of mind.

Merry Christmas.

Lucia

I felt a huge burden lifted off of me last night after I sent that. I felt and told myself, "I have done the right thing." I felt that now I can move on and focus on the person who loves me and finding a way to be with him.

This Finnish woman feels to me like the woman in the dream I wrote about in a previous entry. I'm still afraid to look at how she answered the email I wrote above.