The Golden Rule

My religion is very simple: treat others the way you would like them to treat you. I try to live by that rule, but sometimes I get tripped up by mean people and am not sure what to do. Revenge is so much more fun, so sometimes doing right becomes a toss-up.

In January 2004 I had sold my Bellevue townhouse – a place I’d enjoyed for five years – to a nice couple. It was a neat place with marble flooring throughout, and I’d done extensive upgrades. It sold for full price, as all properties in Puget Sound do (at the very least). The people I sold it to were great.

The three of us became fast friends. We hit it off so that we all planned to go out to dinner after closing. The boyfriend worked as a contractor at the same software company where I worked, so we handled most of the deal via email. It was the smoothest real estate sale I’d ever done. (It was my fifth FSBO.)

I scrubbed the townhome clean before moving out. I bought my buyers a nice bottle of champagne and left it in the fridge with a card when I moved out. I left them plenty of paint, some nice garage shelving, brand new vertical blinds, some beautiful plants, and more. I agreed to raise the sales price by $5K (and pay the extra excise taxes on that amount myself) so they could get $5k cash back at close.

My front door had a nice brass door knocker engraved with my last name, which had been a gift. I knew that if I removed the knocker before closing, it would leave two holes in the nice wood door. So I left it in and got a replacement brass door knocker (worth about $40) for the buyers.

Sounds like the perfect closing, right? Actually, it was. However, at the same time I was screwed over by another couple I was purchasing a different, larger townhome from. The deal fell through. Long story, but the husband who robbed me blind in the deal was a software program manager at the same company where I worked.

In a nutshell, my sale went through but my purchase failed. I was homeless. My buyers wanted to move in, so I moved out - at a hefty cost. I moved half my stuff into storage and crammed the rest into a tiny, old, crappy apartment a couple blocks away. It was a nightmare.

Until then I didn’t know what it was like to have obnoxious, rambunctious children living - I mean, running - overhead on the other side of a cardboard-thin ceiling. I hadn’t experienced waking up to a clogged toilet in a 1-bathroom apartment and having to drive to Safeway to use the bathroom on my way to work. I hadn’t used an exterior coin-operated laundry since college. The place sucked. But it was temporary, and I survived without eating at all that month because my stomach was torn up over the law suit I was now involved in.

Despite all of that, I still went over to my old place to give the new owners their shiny new brass door knocker. The boyfriend was apparently in a bad mood and snapped at me to remove my shoes before entering their home (and walking on the floors that I’d scrubbed on my hands and knees for them). The boyfriend was really pissy and didn’t feel like taking five minutes to remove my door knocker to give back to me; I assumed it was just the moving blues. I said, “Oh no problem. Here’s your door knocker. You can just remove mine at your convenience and send it back to me through inter-office mail at work.” That was our deal.

About four weeks later I found and purchased a much nicer townhome - complete with lake view - than the one that fell through. But I was dealing with lawyers and such unfairness that it gave me ulcers. I shrunk to a size 10 during the ordeal.

Anyway, I emailed my buyer friends to find out if they wanted to go to dinner the next week. Their strange response was that they were “busy” and weren’t available that week. I replied back and asked about the week after. In that note, I also mentioned the door knocker, asking if they’d had time to take mine down yet.

This was when I found out that these “friends” were not what they seemed. The response I got back from the girlfriend addressed her boyfriend, not me. She said something to him like, “Gee, Niv, do you remember anything about a door knocker?” I was taken aback. I thought she was kidding around.

But then the boyfriend replied and said something to the effect, “Gee Michelle, I think I remember something about a door knocker. I’m pretty sure I threw it away.”

I was stunned at this sudden turn-around in my new friends' cold attitude toward me. What was going on? At the end of his short message, the boyfriend Niven sarcastically said that I could probably pick up a new door knocker for myself "for $3 at Home Depot."

Wow. I don’t know what their game was, but that was down-right spiteful of them to throw away (i.e., steal) my engraved door knocker, taking the one I gave them in its place. So that was the end of that friendship. I was really hurt by their hateful behavior – mostly because I never got an explanation. For a while I wondered where I went wrong.

But later I found out from neighbors that the new buyers didn’t hit it off with the rest of my little condo community there and had already pissed off one board member. To this day, my buyers haven’t shown up to a single association meeting or introduced themselves to my other former neighbors.

Alas, this story has a good ending.

So here it is a year and nine months later. The gods smiled upon me today when I opened up my work email to check my calendar. There in my Inbox was a note with a subject line that read “keyless entry code for Bellevue home.” I had no idea which Bellevue home this was regarding until I opened the message, which was time-stamped 8:50PM last night.

The message read:

Hi Susie,

Do you recall the keyless entry garage door codes? Even one would be helpful. Just got home from a trip and can’t get in. Would be very useful.

niv

It took a few seconds, but when it dawned on me that the mean people were asking for my help, I started laughing out loud. I laughed so gleefully at their predicament of being locked out and having the gall to ask me for help that I was almost surprised by my own total lack of compassion. Even my cat was ashamed.

Nonetheless, this had made my day.

Now, normally I would take the high road and not even respond. My friend Vonceil suggested that I do just that – not even reply - rather than lower myself to the mean people’s level.

“But where’s the fun in that?!” I asked her. Besides, by the time she said that (in a separate email thread today), I’d already written and re-written my response to the mean people four times. In it, I reminded them of how nice I was to them and told them I'd never understand their ugly, hateful behavior as long as I live.

I’d won, and I knew it. I couldn’t have been happier at that moment if I’d won the lottery. Justice was served, as it so rarely is these days. I was one with the universe. What went around came around. And finally, they got theirs. (Etc.)

That was enough for me, but I sent my self-satisfying reply to the mean people anyway. And that felt even better. Vonceil called it “wicked" of me. But that only made me giggle more. This wasn't wicked - this was cause for celebration. I promptly went on a shopping spree at Century 21 downtown. Hee-hee!

I should never shop when I’m on top of the world. I always end up buying myself something I don’t need. Today it was a nice French perfume called, “Oui!” to add to a shelf full of perfume I already own.

Yes!