'Tis the Season? You bet your ass, it is!

I love this time of year. Really, I do. And not because of all the good cheer, holiday festivities and all that happy horseshit. At least, that's not why I'm writing "I love this time of year."

Because I do. I do love all the holiday festivities, what with the indulgent eating, drinking and shit-eating grinning that goes on, come Winter. But that's not why I'm here right now.

No, I love this time of year because of the easy money.

So I'm back at the Ranch after taking a much needed and well-deserved long weekend off. And one of my top agenda items for the day is to call on one of my Adversaries concerning a particular client's case we had been negotiating on for a short time. Now this is not the first, second, or even third issue I had negotiated with this particular Adversary. We have had more than a few cases together over the past few years. In fact, I had recently pummeled her with a barrage of demands on several, very old cases in the past few months. Now I was once in her shoes, and having been there, I can say that, as a result of these "retro" claims (what really amounts to big fishing expedition),I probably held a position of some distinction and honor on her shit list. But, we're both professionals, so we have continued to maintain a very amicable, even gracious dialogue up to this point.

Now when we had last spoken, just over two weeks ago, she had extended an offer of settlement in the amount of x. At that time I advised her that I would take the offer back to my client, talk it over with him and get back to her. Pretty typical stuff, really.

So, I thought about her offer. In my opinion, her offer of x was really an adequate, if not solid offer to resolve my client's issue at hand. I mean, I had already done extremely well on the first two issues of this client's case. Better, in fact, than I had originally thought when I was given the case to begin with. This was an offer that satisfied all of the goals put in place when the Ranch was hired over a year and a half ago. I had already gone the distance, and then some, for his girlfriend's companion case. A girlfriend, who poetically enough, dumped his sorry ass shortly after I concluded her case, and was a humongous pain in my NUTS!! (Hey, at least she had a great ass!!) So I thought it was a pretty good offer.

So I'm thinking, do I call the client and get him to accept the offer? Because at this point, I've already made this non-English speaking, non-contributing to the economy, cultural-divide punk more money on this case than he ever expected, so he's going to do pretty much whatever I tell him. It's just that by calling him, I'm going to lose at least an hour or two of productivity on clients who are more grateful, and who's cases are worth much more. And I'd rather not waste anymore time than I have to.

So I thought about it for a few days. I turned it over in my head every morning on my way along the Viaduct. Hell, I thought about over dinner one evening with the Female Companion. (Between the steamed mussels in a garlic and tomato sauce and the main course, if you were wondering.) Do I accept the offer as is, perhaps build a little stock and good grace with my counterpart by not being a pain in her ass which could be used in the future? Or do I do what she's expecting me to do and come back with my hand out for more. And while she did not say "this is my best offer, take it or leave it," or anything else like that, she was pretty firm about her offer. I mean, really, I could just take it and be done with this already time consuming case and moderately aggravating and needy citizen, or I could step up, take a shot, go the extra mile and hopefully do some good for our client.

Well, I decided to call my Opponent back, ultimately undecided about my course of action when I picked up the phone to dial (never a good thing to do).

Once the phone has rung the obligatory number of times, her voice mail picks up. Again, pretty typical stuff. Only this time, her message states that she's out of the office until after the GorgeFest of T-giving.

OK, fine, I'm not going to leave her a message that she won't get to for another 10 days and hence never return. I'm going to call her back on upon her return. This will give me a few more days to further ponder my plan of action.

It's at this point that I call Mr. Client up and tell him about the x offer, answer his questions, tell him my thoughts and recommend that he accept the offer. Which of course, he does. So cool, I've covered my bases, I can put this back into my subconscious and let it rumble around for a while. Now don't get me wrong, it wasn't all peaches and cream. He did have to call back at least two more times that afternoon to pester me with bullshit questions, but it wasn't too bad. And within a day or two more, I had a basic strategy mentally in place.

So fast forward to the appointed day (today). I call Adversary up and to my surprise, I get a live person!

- Hi Adversary, this is JR calling from the Ranch on Mr. Fussypants. How are you today?

- I'm good, yourself?

- Great, thanks. How was your vacation last week?

- Oh, it was great thanks. Ate too much, of course, but I got to sleep all day yesterday, which was really nice.

- Yeah, I took off out of town for a long weekend myself. Had a great time, got some rest.

- (Laughs) Yeah, sometimes a little break from this work will do wonders for you.

- Indeed. Listen, I wanted to get back to you on Mr. Fussypants. Now when we last spoke your offer was for x, in response to our demand for 4x. I took your offer back to the client and discussed it with him. He's rejected it and given me authority to come down to 2x, but I'm pretty sure I can get this done at 1.5x. And would you look at that, I just bid against myself!! (A big no-no, and probable sign of weakness in my world.)

- Why yes you did. And as a matter of fact, I have authority for 1.5x, so if you can get it done for that, we've got a deal.

- Why don't you go ahead and send the check on over. We'll get this wrapped up right now.


Now you might want to bust my chops for "caving" too easily. I mean, I went from 4x to 1.5x in two quick breaths. But remember, I thought that x was more than the case was actually worth in the first place. So not only did I get another 50% on top of what the client thinks he's getting, but it only took me one phone call.

And here's my point. Because it's the end of the year, folks are getting into that "giving" mood. They're worn out from the year before and getting kind of tired of the fight. There's a sense of closure with the end of the year, and as a result, people want to clear off as much of the crap on their desk as possible. And I'm here, ready to pick up any crumb you may overlook.


More importantly, though, because I've kicked so much ass throughout the past 11 months, that one 5 minute telephone call put another $500.00 directly in my pocket!!! This is over and above my regular salary that I make whether I'm actually closing cases, or banging the cute new receptionist. And we're talking 5 small after the Big Boss at the Ranch has taken his cut.

So let's see, $500 for a 5 minute phone call. What's that break down too? Well, that's $6,000 per hour, $48,000 per day, $336,00 per week or $17,472,000 per year. It's no Ken Griffey Jr. income, but it 'ain't bad for a white boy', as my Pappy used to say. (Pappy was bitter about a lot of things.)

My real point is this: For all you sorry sacks who like to take shots at me and my colleagues in the priesthood for being connivers, cheats, swindlers and sharks, I say:

Go fuck yourself!!

Because believe it or not. I do take the high road. Even for ungrateful ass munches who I wouldn't go out of my way to piss on, if they hadn't signed on the dotted line. Because once you do, I'm your bitch, 'til the very fucking end. But that service doesn't come cheap.


And yes, I sleep just fine at night, thankyouverymuch.

Egotistical?? You bet your ass I am.

And if you think this rant is bad, wait until I'm in a bad mood...