Two Sundays ago, I received a very, very unexpected call. No, it’s not my ex or anybody else but from someone that one wouldn’t think of in a million years, my competitor or to be more exact, my competitor’s wife. She has an interesting proposition to make, a proposition that I wouldn’t have dreamt of at all. She is offering to sell me their business. Wow! That was a huge offer but I’m not buying because she was asking for a stiff price. Anyway, the point is that I should be feeling exceptionally good about the offer but I don’t exactly felt that way. Instead, I felt disturb for an entirely different reason. I should be happy about the way events had turned out mainly for two reasons. First, is that I got rid of myself of a pain in the neck and second, it is mark of honor and pride that your competitor finally acknowledge your “superiority” by “surrendering” their “kingdom”. As things turn out, the reason that my competitor’s wife sold the business was because she ran out of cash and the circumstances that led her bankruptcy was due to their “internal” family problems. My competitor used to be very big. In fact, they are humongous in our eyes. Well, it is because we were small if not tiny back then. They are actually a medium size firm with several subsidiaries, around 10 perhaps if I’m not mistaken. We are in the same line of business as they are and they are very, very intolerant of competition for they throw everything at us including the kitchen sink. They used every tactics, the dirtier the better; no niceties just to drive us out of business. And in those trying times, I say that they could have succeeded if we weren’t made of sterner stuff. I truly hate them for that. But times had changed, indeed! For who would expect that 20 years later, I would be getting an offer from them? Their business is actually still viable and probably profitable if not for their family woes. It happened a long time ago according to rumors. They are once a happy couple with two kids and then, they had a nasty fight and things turn sour. My competitor, the husband started to had affairs outside marriage and no sooner, he had a string of mistresses. He later went to China and started a business there with one of his trusted lieutenant by his side. In China, the husband took in a concubine and had a son with her. The wife upon learning an inkling of her husband’s indiscretion began actively scrutinizing him, investigating him, stalking him. One time, it was rumored that she learned through a private eye that she hired the whereabouts of her husband and she went there. Climbing over the walls to the backyard and sneaking into the house, she was shocked to discover that her husband was having a threesome with another woman along with his lieutenant. What happens next was anybody’s guess. At any rate, they separated (though they didn’t divorce or got an annulment) and no sooner than later, the wife began to take in lovers of her own even bearing one child after the other for every “husband” she had. Since, the husband was a foreign national and couldn’t legally own assets in the Philippines, every asset and businesses were in the name of the wife. She began to squander the fortune by showering her lovers with gifts and she opened one business after another for her lovers. The lovers only manage to take as much as they can get their hands on and as the oil well went dry, they left her. She was left with nothing except for her bruised ego and their love child. And so it began, she sold off one business after the other to finance her life or what left of it and partly, to take revenge against her true husband for forsaking her. Their children seeing that their parents are squandering their inheritance hiked off with the remaining cash in the bank accounts as well as skimming the company profits and left their mother to herself. In the end, she was left with nothing but the crown jewel that is the business and she offering it to me. For that, I could be more than overjoyed. However, the “victory” ringed somehow hollow, if not illusionary. I prefer to earn that singular distinction of putting them out of business as they tried on us but failed decades ago. I prefer seeing their face on the ground with one of my foot on top of them like a conqueror or even like a buffoon who thinks he is Napoleon but not like this. I don’t want to take the victory “prize” from a silver platter that they handed to me because of their own problems. Not this way. The husband, the last I heard fared no better and was struggling in China. His once trusted lieutenant skimmed profit from the company, took away his clients, pirated his staff and employees, and turn around and almost drive him out of business. Talk about double crossing. This may all sound like a script in one of the popular soap opera but this is no TV act. It is real life. Their story could elicit pity from anyone who hears their tale but I don’t pity them. I simply cannot…… Though I have no love lost for my competitor, I cannot help myself but felt “disturbed” by what had happened. I came to learn a few things from this “story”. First, wealth but is only fleeting. One could spend half of their lifetime amassing their fortune and squander them in half the time. If wealth is the end all be all goal then, I say one is a fool to built their house on shifting sand. Second, business fails for many a reason but ultimately from bankruptcy. However, family problems or marital problems could be just as detrimental as outdated product lines and poor investment choice. Thirdly, I cannot help but wonder about the wisdom of marriage. Is marriage practical? I mean we have two people from different families with different background, different culture, different belief coming together and expects to live happily ever after. How could that be? We are trying to “fused” in two different cultures, two different beliefs, and two different worlds each with their own idiosyncrasies into one. The resulting situation is unstable and conflicts are inevitable. Is it then any surprise that stories such as those of my competitors happen? If marriage were to work, is love enough? Is love all we need to make a marriage work? Or do we consider character of our future mate? Their personality? The chemistry or the rapport between one and his wife? Perhaps…….
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