Job 6:21

Now you have become like that stream,

   You see my calamity, fear takes you.

I am in the midst of dealing with someone whose behavior is less than professional. The behavior reminds me of that associated with a juvenile (which it may be), but they are selling on ebay and I expected at least competent behavior. So far the person has offered me cards extraneous to the listing (not totally within ebay rules), sent the items without tracking (outside ebays policies covering returns), sent the item without enough postage (easy mistake?), pestered me with messages since ebay refunded my money since he has missed the target delivery data and did not have tacking (how do you define harassment?), and  now he has threatened to post stuff on facebook if I did not contact them (this cannot be acceptable behavior). I did turn them in for a late delivery (in case it never showed), but I told him I was only protecting my rights and stated I would pay it the item ever arrived. I am guessing I should have paid a little more money to someone else for the card or just skipped it. (Update: It arrived, I paid, all is good.)

Upon review, I took the whole first stich the same as my favorite source. Other sources countered with something like “So you are nothing to me.” I saw no support for the “to me” bit and “the nothing” loses the train of thought following the wadi within these verses. One had the idea of them having “proven themselves of no help”, which is true, but so underwhelming. The other idea was that they had become “his”. I had no idea who “he” was supposed to be, so I dropped this line with no more thought.

In place of “my calamity”, there were many options from “something dreadful”, “terror”, “my casting down”, “sight of misfortune”, “panic” to “my disaster”. The range of options led me to believe the underlying term was similar to a pronoun, and I picked the one most consistent with the passage in my mind. “Fear takes you” was actually of my own doing from “are afraid”, “take fright”, “you fear”, and “are seized with fear”. I just liked the action aspect over the alternatives.

For continuing education last week, I ran through a course on negotiations. One kind of negotiations builds a relationship to pursue future opportunities and seeks a long term better set of deals than just a one off. The other is of course the one off. You will never want again what this entity now has and you do not care if you leave offended as long as you do not pay more than you want. In my role as a customer on ebay, I assume anyone can have the next card I want and try to never sour a relationship. Of course, each person decides what offends them, so even when I offer my best price, sometimes it ends any opportunity to get that or any cards from them. I cannot control stupidity in others, right? I probably would never have bought from this guy again due to shear luck rather than any plan, but now I will want to avoid him. He has come like that stream for me, good for nothing. Maybe he will learn some manners or how to use tracking, but I am not here to teach him. I see his calamity and pray I do not fall into such a trap.