What do you call it when one party of a deal profits from the misfortune or disadvantage of the other party? When one party enters into the agreement with eyes wide-open, with intent, and full knowledge that the other party is in a vulnerable situation, or the other party is misrepresenting their authority, or not having the full approval of a superior person or body to exercise that authority with respect to the deal in question? When one party knows, or ought to know, that they are perhaps fleecing the other party, or the third party that person ostensibly represents?
What do you call behaviour like this?
Exploitation comes to mind as a start. Taking advantage of someone else’s stupidity or possible malfeasance or misrepresentation, recognizing the advantage you possess, and seizing the opportunity to do just that.
Maybe opportunism is the correct word instead, just for the fact that you saw the opportunity, recognized it for what it was, and looked like you jumped on it to your advantage, possibly to the disadvantage of others.
What about predatory? Where you may have recognized the situation, inserted yourself into it knowing that an unfair advantage could be obtained, and pursued that unfair advantage for your own benefit. Where maybe you actively worked in concert with the weaker party all along, creating the situation where your advantage and their disadvantage would be cemented by contract, knowing that once signed, that contract would be considered valid except for very rare circumstances.
In business, they might call this business savvy, good business acumen. They might say a deal is a deal and the other party should have known better. They might say it’s not their fault the other party was stupid, or didn’t follow the proper rules, or that the people above that person didn’t exercise their proper due diligence. They might say it’s not their fault everyone on the other side of the contract appeared to be asleep or intimidated. Business is business. If you can’t play with the big boys, get the hell out of the ring.
This is like an adult swindling a kid, whose parents then find out about and demand a retraction, only to have the adult come back and say that you should have been keeping a closer watch on your kid. It’s a valid point, you should have been. But does the adult have the right to insist upon the conditions of the mismatch? Legally, yes. Morally? Subject to debate.
Seemingly taking advantage of another’s vulnerability.
There aren’t many folks left who had the experience of living through the Great Depression, a time when financial desperation was almost everywhere and felt by almost everyone. But as always, the ones who have the money can take advantage of those who don’t, something that’s happened forever. Many wealthy folks would buy up foreclosed mortgages for pennies on the dollar and then sit on the properties, waiting for times to get better, then selling the properties at huge profits while the families that once resided in those homes became moribund. There were wealthy families that did that sort of thing right here in Renfrew during the 1930’s and were hated for it.
How about this practice, one that continues today? You’re a vulnerable senior, likely a widower, living alone in a home bought and paid for. Owning a home is great, but running it costs money. Utilities and repairs are a constant fact of life, and you don’t have that kind of cash, either surviving on your dwindling savings, an extremely modest government pension, or both. You have grown children with growing families, and while you’d like to help more financially, it’s just not feasible, at least to the degree that you’d like to. Your only true financial value to them is in your death, as your home gets sold and the money divided up among the kids. I suppose that’s a small comfort but, well, you’re dead, so you don’t get to see the results of your gift.
Along comes a guy with money, or at least more than most people have. He also has access to cheap credit. Out of nowhere he knocks at your door with a proposal. Sell the house to him — at below market value — and take the cash and invest it in your kids and their kids. Your death isn’t needed for this benefit to take place. As well, you can continue to live in the house for the rest of your days, though you’re responsible for the utilities still and any household maintenance and repairs.
What’s not to like? You’re still alive, you have a place to live, you still have what’s left of your savings, and you still collect your pension. On a day-to-day level, everything’s the same, only you don’t own your house anymore. But you can help your kids financially now rather than after you die, and one’s the same as the other, right?
Except when you die, the rich guy sells the place at market value or better, a number much higher than the one he offered you for the title in the first place. And your kids get none of that fair market value.
I guess the morality of the situation depends upon the amount you accepted from the guy in the first place. But I did mention that you’re a senior, a vulnerable one, living alone, and maybe not the person you once were when it comes to financial dealings. Plus, the guy didn’t knock on your door out of the blue solely to do his fellow human being a solid. He came knocking to do himself a solid at your expense.
So how about that scenario in 2024 Renfrew dollars? You live on Peter Street in Renfrew in a home valued at $399,000. It’s where you lived with your spouse and brought up your family, all of them long gone now. The guy sitting at your kitchen table with his Tim Hortons coffee — he’s tasted enough vulnerable senior coffee to know enough to bring his own — and offers you $150,000 cash. Geez, in your mind you remember how you paid $6000 for the place back in 1966. 150 grand?!? Imagine what could be done with that windfall? Plus you get to live out your days there, and keep your income and savings as is. It’s like found money. It’s the whole bird in hand is worth two in the bush thing, but in his favour.
What do you care if this nice young man pockets $250,000 dollars in profit for doing absolutely nothing other than fleecing you from your home and then selling it at market value after your death, which may not be far off, because you’re in your low-90’s to begin with, and you’ve been kind of cheating it off and on now for the past several years.
You can’t borrow money because of your age. He can because of his. He gets a $150,000 loan/mortgage, pays you, waits for you to die, pays off the loan and pockets the rest. He’s been doing this for years. In fact, he currently has four other people on this kind of arrangement right now, and always on the hunt for more. That aging population of ours is a gold mine for him.
He pats himself on the back for his business savvy. Cigars and tumblers of scotch whiskey with every win.
There are people in the area and elsewhere who have built themselves up by using these tactics. You might even hang out with them, go to the same church, see them at the arena every Saturday. Wave at them in Walmart. Unless they pulled this stunt on someone you loved. Then you’d think differently, just like you would have back in the 1930’s when they bought out your mortgage and kicked your family to the curb. Different times. But same type of people.
So what if a business entered into an agreement to name a public building after itself, this after the cost of renovation of that public building had spiralled out of control, something that almost everyone other than the town council seemed to know about at the time? This business was dealing with, perhaps even approached by, a representative of the municipal government, perhaps a program director, somebody who one could reasonably feel was authorized to make such a deal, albeit conditionally.
Would that local business know, or ought to have known, that things weren’t all that happy in Happyville? The guy they were dealing with was offering one of those too-good-to-be-true deals, which is exactly what it was, but the business probably consulted their attorney and he/she/other said no, it’s legit, this guy has either direct or implied authority to do the deal. The fact that the guy, the municipal guy, has apparently not been forthright with those who should be exercising oversight — namely Town Council — shouldn’t trouble the business in a legal sense. If the guy, or his masters, are screwing up somehow, that’s their screw-up, not yours. So the business signs on the dotted line, maybe even tipping over the ink jar in their haste, because it’s such a “good” deal. Then they tear down the legacy indigenous name, and slap up their caricature logo in its place, then get to work advertising themselves every time they report on any event happening within.
Nice going. That business didn’t screw the guy, or the people he’s supposed to report to. That guy screwed himself, and by extension those who should have been looking over his shoulder. “Not our problem,” the business might say.
Get those cigars out. Bust out that scotch.
Except if anyone got screwed here, it was the taxpayers of Renfrew. They’re the folks who expected that the people they elected and the people who run the various town departments were doing their jobs and exercise a proper duty of care. And apparently many weren’t, in plenty of areas. So it’ll be those taxpayers that pay off the shortfall, estimated to be in the tens of millions of dollars. All the while that business looks over their domain as masters of the castle, spinning out those oldies hits and pumping their own tires every time something happens in that building.
What a great deal. Good business for them. Bad business for you. they even preface their name with the prefix my, as if yours, but seemingly behave as if what they really mean is theirs.
How did this business even get into a position to haggle out this deal in the first place? Why them? Were they approached instead of a regular application process? If they were, could they not recognize that something was a bit off, a bit odd? That something didn’t smell right, didn’t add up? That this was something that would normally be conducted using an RFP – request for proposal — process? Evidently, none of that occurred to them, some may say conveniently. Or maybe it didn’t matter to them in the first place.
I think the business paid $13,000 for the rights for just about everything, the figures moving in and out like that whack-a-mole game at a carnival. Whatever the numbers, they appear to be nowhere near the proper market value. They didn’t get a deal, it was more of a steal in many eyes, or whatever one calls a one-sided fleecing of the other party.
Surely there’s a lesson here somewhere.
When I was a kid, I was a disc-jockey for hire, a good one, a popular one, the kind that made $600/night, and that was back in the 70’s. A new bar in town hired me to do a nine-day gig to launch their new bar/dance club, the agreed upon price being $2700.00 for the nine days. They advertised on local radio and even had my working name up on marquee signage outside the mall where the place was located. The idea was to run Thursday-Saturday, followed by Monday-Saturday the following week. They were piggy-backing on my reputation to get the patrons in.
It was a nice place, and it was a good idea from their point of view, at least that’s the way it looked to me, all seventeen years-old of me. It should have worked, but it didn’t.
Nobody showed up on that first Thursday, aside from some family who wanted to check out the big deal, and to see their brother do what he did. They were proud of me. But then felt bad for me as I did my thing to an empty room. They left, and I continued to spin for the bar employees, themselves probably relying on tips that weren’t available. It was a major embarrassment.
Friday was the same, a complete disaster. So too was the Saturday. It was clear to just about everyone that it wasn’t going to work.
On Monday, the owner called me and asked me to come and see him. When I was there, he informed me that, since it wasn’t going very well, he was going to cancel the whole concept of a bar/club and would no longer be needing my services, therefore not going to pay me for the remaining six days, some $1800.00. That hurt because I had nothing to do with the failure, I did everything as per normal, and never compromised my quality of product. It’s just never been in me to do that, regardless of the situation. But no, it was over, too bad kid, nice try and all that, so buzz-off. So I buzzed off, stinging with embarrassment.
I went home. My brother-in-law happened to be in town. He was the publisher of a number of newspapers, and knew a couple of things about a couple of things, including what a contract was and how they worked. He didn’t huff and puff at the owner, and he didn’t admonish or belittle me for my teenaged naivety. Instead he sat me down and quietly explained how the contract worked, and what possible redress I might have. He informed me of the threshold for Small Claims Court, which at that time I believe was $1000.00. He reminded me that I had given up on potential gigs to work this one, and that might be over $1000.00 in lost earnings right there. He said there was likely no way I was going to be successful at getting the whole $1800, but he did hold out the possibility of me at least getting some of that money.
But it would take me doing something I didn’t want to do, essentially going back to the owner and raising the prospect of going to court, at least for a chunk of that money. I won’t bullshit you, I was not the kind of person who could walk into anywhere and pound my fist on a table and make demands of any sort. But if nothing else, I looked up to this brother-in-law of mine, and for that reason only, I went ahead and did it so as to not disappoint him, not that he would have been.
I made the call. The guy actually agreed to a meeting, because honestly, if he hadn’t, that would have been the end of the game right there. So in I went and sat in the same chair across the same desk from the same guy. I told him of the advice I’d received and how it was my intent to go to Small Claims. He said I couldn’t. I said yes I could, not really sure anymore if I could or not. Then he told me it wasn’t right for me to collect all that money ($1000 of the $1800 owed) when I didn’t perform my end of the contract. I reminded him that he was the guy that shut the whole thing down. He said it still didn’t make it right. I agreed at the unfortunate circumstances, and he agreed that my agreement was spot-on. So I said “I’ll take $500.00 and we can call it square.” He looked at me across that desk, took his glasses off, rubbed his eyes a bit, put his glasses back on. I thought I was screwed right there.
“Okay, fine” he said, and stuck his hand out and over the desk. I damned near fell out of my chair I couldn’t shake that hand fast enough. But then I asked him why he didn’t just negotiate with me right from the beginning?
“Because I wanted to see what you were going to say.”
Meaning that if I’d said nothing, I would have been out the whole thing.
But there’s one thing I’d like to point out here. He was trying to lean into my disadvantage for his own benefit, but it just didn’t work out. On the other side, I clearly understood that had I gone to bat for the full $1000.00 small claims maximum, or even the full $1800.00 in regular court, I’d be essentially taking advantage of his unfortunate circumstances in order to get my end of what was clearly a bad deal for him. The $500.00 represented what I felt to be an adequate compromise. We had both lost something in our joint effort, and so in good conscience the remedy should reflect that. I’m sure if I had walked out of that office with $1800.00 in my pocket I’d probably wet myself with happiness.
But I also know that I wouldn’t have felt right about it. The $500 was completely adequate to be honest, as I needed to pay equipment rental costs of my own. So it’s not like I was laughing all the way to the bank. We had, however, made it right. And my brother-in-law, I think, was proud of me to a degree, although he probably thought I’d make a shit businessman, an assumption nobody who knew me would disagree with.
The salient points of that story are this:
The guy didn’t want to pay me, so he attempted to take advantage of me for his own advantage. He saw a way out at my expense. Had I said nothing, he would have been just fine stiffing me. And I was prepared to let him.
I had him at a disadvantage, too. I had learned about the law, and possible remedies afforded by the court system. I could have insisted on the whole amount, but didn’t, settling for something of an agreeable compromise, something I would never have reached had I said nothing.
He agreed to the compromise. Despite his shadiness at first, he eventually agreed to come to a mutually satisfactory conclusion. Both of us lost, but we agreed to mitigate each other’s loss. We made what was right out of a bad, albeit unfortunate situation.
My point then is that If it could be done then it could be done now. Different people, different entities, but a situation that just doesn’t seem to meet the bar of appropriateness nonetheless. Can willing parties, in good faith, make an attempt to make this right? Not perfect, but at least better? There is no perfect to be had here, but that shouldn’t stop us from aiming to get as close as we can.
The wording of the current document governing naming rights has the town claiming the right to walk away from said rights at any time for any reason. But I don’t know if this business deal is governed by that document. The town won’t tell me. Nor will they tell me any of the terms surrounding the deal. I doubt the business would be any more forthcoming, especially with me.
If I was making the deal, it would be simple. Keep your name on the ice-resurfacer, the dressing rooms, and the meeting rooms. You can even have the hot dog machine in the lobby, that is if that other business with their name all over the lobby doesn’t throw a snit. Keep your corporate branding on the outside of the building to denote the fact that your offices are inside. All fair game. We’ll kick back the corresponding amount of money you paid to name the whole place after yourself.
And you stop calling the place by your business name, because that’s not its name. That’s something you should have understood in the first place if you have the best interests of the community truly at heart. You should have seen that doing so was egregiously inappropriate and an affront not just to the legacy of the place, but to the people who pay taxes in this town.
It’s the Ma-Te-Way Activity Centre, in case you lost sight of that.
A hell of a deal. Even a seventeen year-old could pull it off.
Council has allowed the deal to stand as is, but for a five-year term with the possibility of a further five year extension. Maybe a little good faith would make that extension come a little easier, especially since the pressure will be on to follow a RFP process. As it should.
If I’m at the table, there might even be some good faith coming back in your direction, particularly if you showed me some. But if you feel you can’t, or feel you won’t, then please don’t count on getting any back from me when the time comes, which it will, in fifty-three short months. If you’re not going to be there when I need you to be, I can’t guarantee I’ll be there for you when you need me.
And please don’t threaten to leave town over any of this. That would be petulance, and should be beneath you. Despite you trumpeting yourself as a community booster, which is fine, you’re here for a reason, and that reason is in your wallet.
That’s good business.
And it shouldn’t be just you with the scotch and cigars.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 