Be nice to everyone

Durring my recent confinement, I originally left a message on my voice mail giving MadDog's office number as an emergency number.

One woman, whom I had helped before, called, leaving me several tearful messages. I was already out of patience with her from the first encounter. The messages were more and more tearful and begging me to call her- to help her for free, which I wasn't about to do because I didn't have the wherewithall to deal with her at that point. Finally, MadDog's secretary called me because the woman had called her and wanted some information from her file and YELLED at her when she said she didn't have the file there. First, there was nothing in her file but some notes about her behavior last time because all I did for her was to help her get a copy of her Court record, which is public information. Secondly, I will now never help her because she wanted something for free and yelled at MadDog's secretary who is one of the nicest and most compitent people I know. MadDog often says she could practice law better than fully 25% of the attorneys here.

Its a lesson MadDog taught me early and often: Be nice to everyone. You never know who that person is or what s/he knows that you don't.

He also said, "Its nice to know Mr. or Ms. Big, but its more important to know his or her secretary." Most of the time the secretary really knows what's going on.


Two great examples:

A probate Judge told me this the other day:

A young man he knows had gotten a job training to be a sales man at the Merceedes dealership in Alabama. One rainy day early in his training there was a solitary black man wandering the lot. None of the other salespeople wanted to got out to the customer because it was cold and wet so they let the trainee go out because he wanted to. He was nice to the guy and helped him and when they returned to the office, it turned out that that man was Lionel Richie and he bought 4 Merceedes. The other sales people tried to horn in on the trainee's deal, but Richie wouldn't let them and that young man earned his stripes that day.

Be nice to everyone.

Story two: A man I know who calls himself a tree killer walked into a bank. He was tired and dirty after a long day of work. The people were giving him a hard time about something and were not treating him politely at all and sent him over to a bank officer to talk about something. (I happen to know this particular bank officer: he cut his fingernails while I was trying to talk to him about business, so while I have no idea what exactly he did in this situation, but I'll bet it was a doozie) So the officer treats this man poorly, and our hero tree killer shruggs his shoulders and says, "I'm sorry that's your attitude. I'll just close my accounts with you. Here are my account numbers, I'll wait out there for the cashier's check."
A large amount of cash later the officer was blubbering at his feet trying to make up for his rude behavior and was happy to do what the man wanted.

Be nice to everyone- even bank officers who are rude to you. The only thing you can do when someone doesn't treat you well is to take your business elsewhere.

Which is why Bellsouth will never ever again have my business... but that's a different story for a different day.

Oh, and if you're wondering why I shouldn't be nice to that woman and help her.. its because you can say "no" nicely. Which I did. I didn't even try to explain to her why she should have been nice to MadDog's secretary-- that's why I'm telling you.