The Truth Has Two Faces — and counting

Let’s take a scenario and evaluate the details from two perspectives.  Here’s our scenario.  A potential customer goes to a business and discusses the customer’s project.  The business offers to help with a specific aspect of the project.  The customer hires the business to perform a specific task.  A dollar amount (let’s say $500) and a due date for performance of the specific task is agreed on.  Money changes hands.  The due date comes and goes, and nothing happens.  The customer contacts the business and demands to know what’s going on.  The business replies with a rash of emails over a period of weeks and things go nowhere.

Eventually the customer has had enough and becomes insistent that the task be performed or payment will be cancelled.  The business responds with a kind of emotional “freak out” and somehow becomes a victim in the equation and arbitrarily raises the price of the task to $2000.  Correspondence from the business becomes personal and ugly to the customer.  The customer informs the business that the relationship is over and cancels the original $500 payment.  The business responds by filing a lien on the customer’s property for $2500 and threatens to smear the reputation of the customer’s husband’s business unless the bill is paid.  The lien is finally removed months after the original interaction after the customer gives the business a few hundred bucks.  In the end, the customer is unhappy and the business is, in some strange way, satisfied with the outcome.

Let’s take a look inside the minds of the involved parties and see what we can find.  The customer entered into the relationship with a very simple and specific issue that needed to be addressed, and entered into the relationship with good intentions.  Why else would they enter the relationship?  It makes no logical sense that they would do anything different.  There is zero evidence to support any claim that the goal posts were moved a bit after the original project was spec’d out.

Next, let’s look into the mind of the business and see where they stand after everything is said and done.  They feel as if they were the victim because the client forced the business to take all of the actions that were taken, and in the process wasted valuable time.  After all, the business was the party that was put in the position where they had to write threatening emails, create an additional bill and file a lien on the customer’s property in order to get satisfied.

How can that possibly make any sense?  Something exists in the mind of the business where the actions they took were essentially demanded of them.  How can any business survive when their business plan revolves around teaching their customers some sort of psycho hard lessons instead of making the customer happy?

Why would a business go to these extremes for such a small amount of money?  One would think that they would look at the situation and say, “This is trivial.  It’s a small world and I need to have good relationships with my customers, as my reputation is paramount.  I need to either fix this or end it as amicably as possible, as soon as possible so everybody is happy.”  That didn’t happen, though.  Not even close.

The question remains, “Why?”

There can only be two possible answers to this question.  Either we’re talking about a business person that is inherently evil and gets off by making customer’s lives hell, or we’re talking about a business person that is suffering from some form of deep psychotic mental condition — and a complicated one at that.  How could a business person become emotionally offended and react with such rage like this?  What could possibly trigger this response?  It appears to be much more than a simple case of paranoia and goes beyond being dysfunctional.  We’re talking about an area of Narcissistic Personality Disorder here that has been combined with PTSD.  From the Transactional Analysis perspective, we’re talking about a person that thrives in the Drama Triangle (Victim, Rescuer, Persecutor) and plays all roles as needed, ultimately ending up in the victim role.  Clearly the stimulus of this behavior happened a long time ago.

It appears that there is a deep psychological need for it to happen on the part of the business.  This is not about business.  This is about a deep emotional pain that requires that a person do everything in their power to make sure that a crisis situation develops and that it is then dealt with as severely as possible.  The strange part is that the business actively seeks situations for this game to be played out, over and over again.  And it doesn’t matter who is on the other end, either.  Even family are fair game.  The only thing that is required is for the game to be “on” — and the starting position is always that of the Rescuer.  This is where the confidence of the customer is secured.  This was repeated throughout the trial and from numerous other sources.

It is difficult to know exactly what caused this psychological phenomenon.  However, does the solution involve imprisonment for multiple years?  Do we not have compassion in this situation?  Are we all above dealing with people that have mental problems?  After all, they certainly do exist.  The fact that this case ended up in the Justice System is highly problematic.  They are clearly not equipped to handle this problem.  The fact that it took three years to get it through a trial proves this point.

Even the judge in this case has noted that Shawnee Ryan has mental problems.  The DA does not dispute that, and in fact has taken advantage of the situation by mocking Shawnee during trial and insinuating that she may be nuts, but not that nuts.  The Judge needs to ask if this is a disturbed defendant who better belongs in a safe mental institution rather than in a prison where she will only be made to indure greater mental suffering.

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As always, your comments are welcome.  Is she evil, mentally ill, or?