The lies we tell to feel good about ourselves

Usually, I ignore anybody who strays from professional business conducts  on Craigslist. With Craigslist the way it is, that’s about 80% of the people who contacts you for any one item. The 20% that remains gets closed in a vast and efficient manner within a day or two and current at 100% success rate once I get to meet them face to face. I consider it good training of my selling skills and at the same time, feeding data to my mentat to better connect behavior and trustworthiness.

Till this date, Tit for Tat seems to work best and a lot of people are surprised at how good the end product is. Part of it is service, the other part is price is that my time is more important than price… which is a concept that most people hasn’t grasped yet on Craigslist. I estimate that failing one transaction will set me off about 20% of the item’s value due to time wasted. Unless it’s an item that’s worth thousands, then it’s worth being picky.

Which is why some might be surprised that I decided to still go ahead with a seller on the purchase of a Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 after he stood me up once. Not only did he insulted my intelligence, but he also lied and shook hand with me. Ohhh yeah, that’s it. I wanted to shake the hand of a sleaze like him. So here’s what went down.

-Email confirmed to meet at 1PM at a certain Cafe. Let’s call him John. Phone numbers exchanged.

-Went to cafe with cash called the number to tell John I have arrived… Voice message.

-Emailed at 1PM and called again after 1:15pm. No response, which means I was stood up. Left promptly. Most likely scenario is that he found a buyer with a better offer. Or he forgot to wake up (on a Saturday)

-Checked the email and his first+last name. No hit. Meaning he creates random accounts so he can pull this off without consequences… except I got his real phone number.

-At 2:30PM I got an email asking if I got any of his messages changing the time to 3:30 PM. Tempted to call his bull shit (really? At this day and age? Everything’s recorded, there is no missed calls), calmed down and the idea that I want to shake his hand emerged. Cause I always cut these people off as soon as I meet them, I never have any data on what their hand shake is like. (And I still want the note 10.1 for business) So I told him I don’t like wasting my time and if he wants the deal to go through meet me at a place and time of convenience.

-Met at 3:30PM He showed me his handset the message he tried to send to me, except he sent to the wrong number. This is a huge insult on my intelligence, but I did not point it out. It’s sad to know that these people actually believe that others will fall for such bullshit. It is paramount that they do not know the truth so they can remain a lesser threat to the society with such obvious bullshit. But mainly, I think, he just wants to feel good about himself, because I made him feel guilty. There are two holes in his theory. 1st, the area code he dialed does not belong in Canada. 2nd On the “fake” attempted call he made, it clearly showed beside the attempt the time stamp of 14:49. I guess he didn’t verify his lie. Yes, call me devious, but I don’t call out people’s bullshit. Why lose the advantage of that knowledge in a negotiation?

-Shaking his hand was awful. But I remember it now. The handshake of the sleaze is properly analyzed, good trade for $400.

-After I got home, I ran into some bug that cannot be explained. So I dug into it and found out that there’s an app called “Retail Mode” installed and it’s causing a lot of problems. Looking it up on the web, it turns out to be the app stores installs on the tablet on retail display models. So this seller also lied about the origin of this tablet.

-The tablet is in good hands now. Computers don’t die on my watch.