Harry's Blog

If there's one phrase that really gets my goat it's "I'm sorry but", a phrase used by people who are anything but sorry. It is the partner of "I'm sorry if". Both phrases are used by people who know what they are saying is hurtful crap.

This week I've been on the receiving end of several examples. Firstly there was the financial director of a company I used to do some work for. Basically the company is going tits up and I wrote to the financial director setting out my position and how I expected to receive the money owed to me. I have legal right on my side but I don't have the cash to pursue the issue.

The FD sent me a "I'm sorry but" email which in its shortened version says "I don't know anything about the law, but we know you're skint and can't sue us. So we're going to steal your money." Thankfully his financial knowledge is as detailed his legal knowledge, which means the company will need the help of Bob Ballard if it and its buggy products are ever likely to float again. Having seen the company's publicly available accounts it's a wonder the directors aren't in jail.

I'm not alone in questioning the company's business ethics as it is currently being sued for $20 million in the USA. This is part of the reason it is dying on its arse and why it has been so busy announcing new products and trying to grab sales recently. The company is desperate. Most of the stuff the company sells is shite though. Take the company's PSP movie converter software for example; PSP Video 9 does a hell of a lot more, doesn't crash anywhere near as much and is free.

So here I am over five hundred quid down with a wedding to pay for. Believe me I was using some rather Anglo Saxon language when I read the financial director's ridiculous email. After writing about ten draft emails all of which boiled down to "fornicate off and die porcine fiend", though not as succinctly, I decided to take L's advice and just ignore them. I've taken her advice to heart and actually blocked the company's various domains from even getting into my mail server.

The second example was someone who spent several hundred words slagging me off for lots of stuff the writer didn't have a clue about. This wasn't someone I worked for, but they took it upon themselves to make out I was some kind of freeloader. When you spend over a year essentially working half your time for free for a company including evenings and weekends, that kind of thing is not exactly well received. And yes it started as a "I'm Sorry But" email.

You add it all up and it's a week where I've come to feel like a bit of a doormat for folks to stamp all over. I'll be glad when the week is over.