it happened Friday while i was still at work. i had to close that evening. i was nervous throughout the day. tension building like a storm inside my blood. my daughter was supposed to be on the flight to New England at 6. her husband was driving her. their car stalled out. she missed her flight. not only that but now the car is out on the road to the airport in a part of town where it would be stripped clean by dark-30.
so she called Voldemort who said, and i quote, "so get the tow truck to take you to the airport. i'll have another flight waiting for you."
"i can't get to the airport. we got a friend to come get us and he took us back to work."
"okay, here i've got you a flight that will leave at 10 tonight. you'll get into Boston a little after midnight. there's a bus 2 terminals over. get the tram to take you there and get on the last bus. it leaves at 1:30 and will drop you {near where he lives} between 3 and 3:30 AM. call me when you get at the station and i'll come get you."
"are you serious? and what about my car?"
"call a tow truck."
she hung up on him. she cannot afford a tow truck. she cannot afford to fix the car again. he had paid to have it fixed this time and they did not do the work properly. she called me at work sobbing.
in the middle of her conversation with me, she was interrupted by her brother, already in New England, ringing in.
"okay, i've talked to him. this is how it's going to work. call a tow truck and give him dad's number. he's paying to have it towed. tell the tow guy to tow the car back to where you had it fixed. i've already called the service manager and told him that he will fix the car and honor his work. that's it. he is going to honor his work. and you're not coming up here this weekend. the flight he put you on just got delayed until midnight. you won't be getting in until after the bus leaves and i'm not driving to Boston at 2:30 in the morning. it's ridiculous to try and do that. i've made him cool with that."
"oh, my God, how did you do all that? how did you get him to agree to all that?"
"money. his money paid for work that wasn't satisfactory. he needed to be reminded that his money and what people do with it is more important that family. the flight? money again. it would cost him more of his money. he doesn't want to see you and parade you around pretending that he has this great relationship with you more than he wanted to keep his money. now i love you to death and i know you never wanted to come up here so it was easy. money."
"thank you, thank you so much."
"it's okay. i really wanted to see you and hang out with you. you know. a band of brothers or brother and sister thing, but i can take it better than you. i don't care as much and i paid my own way. he can't hold that over me. you, he can manipulate, and he was whacked to try all this and then have you scrape the money together and borrow from mom who has less to try and tow your car and get it re-fixed. that's nuts. he's easy once you remember he really doesn't care as much as he pretends to. it's always gonna be about the money."
and there you have it. conflict resolution. you have to remember what matters most to your opponent and dangle that in front of him/her/them.
the Three Musketeers, or in this case, one of the Musketeers got it done for another Musketeer. "all for one and one for all."
