I’m not perfect. I don’t purport to being even close to perfect. I’ve lived on this island for over 15 years, and I’m so much more lax in my life than I have ever been. Sometimes, I’d even refer to myself as a slacker. I  do try really hard to help my clients and my favorite non-profit organizations in whatever ways I can. But I know my limitations.

If there is something I am not emotionally, physically or financially able to do, I will not do it. Okay, I may try. But as soon as I know I am not up to the task, I will admit it and move on.

Unfortunately, this is not so for everyone. Just look at our Virgin Islands government.

There are also, a couple of people I have personally dealt with in the last week, that take the phrase “delusions of adequacy” to entirely new levels.

At this time, I will not talk about the first one, because s/he works for the attorney we are using to assist with property acquisition and incorporation. And we’re not done with this, so I don’t want to jeopardize any of it.

The other one, however makes me wish I had a punching bag with her face on it. Or a voodoo doll. For most of the day I was visualizing smacking her upside the head, then choking her.

I actually spoke to her on the phone at one point and wanted to scream, “ARE YOU F****** NUTS?! WHAT WERE YOU THINKING YOU RIDICULOUS MORON?!!”

Ahem. But I didn’t do that. I calmly spoke and listened to her while my blood pressure rose to the point that I thought my brain would fly out of the top of my skull.

The situation we were discussing involved a little dog that we tried trapping a couple of weeks ago. Since then, we have seen many people stopping to leave food for the little thing, and since we’ve been incredibly busy with turtle activities, work, household chores, and starting a new business, we decided to leave it to others who might have more free time and could therefore do a better job.

And then, when we went by the area of the little dog over the week-end, there was a BIG sign posted on a tree which read, “Please do not feed the puppy, we are trying to trap it…..” or words to that effect. And it had the person’s name on it. So we thought, “Oh good. Someone’s trying to do it right.”

Riiiiight.

When Michael was coming home from work yesterday, he saw the little dog and stopped to see if he could convince it to come home with him. But another car came up behind him and scared the little dog away. While Michael was there, he noticed that there was no trap anywhere in the area. So when he got home, he tried to contact the person whose name was on the sign.

This person no longer has a land-line, so he couldn’t call her directly. He tried her at work, but she was not there. He asked one of her co-workers to give her a message to please call us about the little dog. The co-worker said that her cell phone number does not work at her house, so he’d just have to leave a message and she’d get it whenever.

Sigh.

So today she called and told me that she hadn’t really set a trap since she needed someone to “help her with it”. But she’s leaving tomorrow for 10 days, and….Meanwhile, the dog has not been receiving any food because there’s a BIG sign on a tree telling people not to feed the dog because….well, you know. As she was explaining this to me, I felt like a crazed cartoon character. I wanted to reach into the phone and grab her by the neck and pull her through to my side where I could twist her scrawny little neck into a knot.

But I remained calm. I went to get the trap, and brought it to Michael who set it up on his way home from work. We went to check it tonight and we have set up a schedule with another competent and reliable dog-lover. We will catch the little guy and we know someone who will give him a good home.

I do not know the moral of this story. I just know that stupid, inept and apathetic people are the reason I am self-employed. If I worked in a situation where others were slacking off, I would feel responsible and probably either do their jobs for them, or I’d lose sleep over it. Unfortunately, I see over and over again, that they are everywhere. They haunt me. I could write my own version of Sartre’s Huis Clos.

Sigh.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 at 8:47 pm and is filed under Rants, St. Croix, Terry Talk. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.