Making A Choice, Final

So, out with N.E.W. and in with O.L.D. To be quite honest, Dan's overall personality just wasn't suited to the job of actually running a company. Like him or not, George was much more dynamic, and just his "hustle and bustle" made him far more appealing to the owners than the laid back Dan. Plus, Dan was basically truthful and straightforward; where George was a master of spin. Even when he didn't know what he was talking about, he could make many folks think he was right on top of the situation. There's no question that his connections to the ownership of the property helped him, and he used it. It just shows how weak a figure Dan was, when early on and the owners had issues, they went to George, not Dan, even though we now know that Dan was the actual owner of the company, although I'm sure the property owners still thought that George was the real owner, too. (What ever deal George and Dan had about N.E.W., it doesn't matter. Dan was the owner.) What perhaps is even more telling, Dan didn't seem to mind the situation in the least. I come back to "balance." You've got to have SOME ego, and Dan was just lacking in this department.

In the aftermath of my leaving, one of the employees for the property owners told me that I should file for unemployment, even though technically I had walked out. I finally contacted Art, the president of George's overall company, and Del's boss. He was nice and granted me the vacation pay I had coming (the building owners were paying for it), and, before I said anything, said that he felt that I should collect unemployment until I got other work. I eventually did contact the local unemployment office and they sent the necessary paperwork, which I completed and returned. The interesting thing was, Art turned over to Del the job of answering the questions of the unemployment office on behalf of the company, something he did with relish and lies. The unemployment office called me and denied the claim, and the lady read back to me exactly what Del had told them, which was untrue. He never mentioned the incident with the Polish student, and he said that I was "unqualified," and he insisted that I REFUSED an offer to learn new job tasks necessary for employment with O.L.D. Now, I had been in property management for 17 years, 12 of those years with O.L.D. or what I'll call the "affiliated" N.E.W.. So now I'm not qualified? And this imaginary "offer" to learn new tasks was just that, IMAGINARY... it never happened!

O.L.D. received the info about the claim denial and Art called me apologizing for what had happened, saying that he had just called Del and "told him that he better be on the phone to the unemployment office explaining to them that he'd misspoken," but you can't undo something like that, so the denial stood. I told the unemployment office the truth, and I have no regrets about doing so. Art proposed that I call them and say that I, too, had misspoken, and alter my story, something I would not do. (So typical of these companies, any lie for whatever purpose of the moment.) The whole thing was, the incident happened just three days after O.L.D. had taken over. If they didn't want me, which is what I think was Del's real agenda, they should have made that clear before, and I would have left when Dan's contract expired, and there would have been no issue about unemployment benefits, because Dan's company went out of business at that point. To keep me on for those three days put me into O.L.D.'s employment, and gave Del the chance to get even with me for the incident with the young Polish student; something he did with relish, and WITHOUT penalty, despite Art's reprimand. I can only remember George saying so many times, "This company reflects its owner!" I'll let you ponder that statement.

Nealy a year later, Dan called me about something. During the conversation, he mentioned that he had been talking with Del, and that the building was still struggling and that Del now knew, first hand, what we had been up against in getting and keeping the occupancy up. To this day, from what I've read in the newspaper, it is still not anywhere near full occupancy.*

* Since I wrote the original article, the property has been taken over by the university, something Dan had recommended several years before, as the university wanted more student housing directly under its control. The owners of the building were against the idea, at that time, as it would have proven how poorly conceived their renovation plan had been and how over leveraged they were. Dan died a few years years ago. He was in his mid 70s. 

Word History:
Ware-Noun form-This goes back to the Indo European root "wer," which had the notion of "watch out for, be aware of." This then gave Old Germanic "war/wer/waro." The idea behind any of these was "watch, be on guard, be alert." From the Germanic base evolved a variety of words in the developing Germanic languages, for example: Frisian "were," Swedish "vara," Dutch "waar," and German "ware." In Old English it was "waru." The idea behind "ware," or more commonly in modern times, "wares," was "object(s) of care." Eventually this changed into "goods for sale." As I mentioned, in modern times we use "wares," the plural form, except in compound words like "adware" (watch your computer!), "hardware," "software," and "Tupperware!" Or, if we reverse the position of the word in a compound, we have "warehouse." By the way, German has "Warenhaus" (literally a "wareshouse"), and while closely related to the English word, the meaning isn't a building for storing "wares," but rather a building that sells "Waren;" that is, a department store!

Ware-Verb form-This too comes from the same Old Germanic base "war/wer/waro." From the base developed the word "warojan," meaning "to guard, to watch out for, be cautious." In Old English it was "warian," with much the same meaning. The word still exists in English, but its usage is archaic. In modern times we prefer the offshoot of the Old English word: "beware," which has much the same meaning.