...and that includes suppliers.

I was just poking around the site (kidney stone -- little bugger's about ready to pass, but until it does, no sleep for me...), and noticed several complaints about nasty responses to their email queries sent to suppliers. Now granted, some people are obviously enormous pains in the a** to the supplier, emailing about their order every day, but if you've waited the specified T/A time provided by the supplier when your order was placed, and you send a query regarding the order and get a pissy, untruthful, or just plain "better than thou response", wrap up your business with that outfit to the extent possible, let the mods know if you were ripped off (they'll want to verify as much as they can before dinging the supplier), and move on. Don't lose your own temper and fire off email after email with threats, provocations, and the like...10 times out of 10 nothing you say, regardless of how threateningly or nastily you say it isn't going to accomplish anything. Some objectives (or nuisances) have to be moved around, rather than taken -- Ask William T. Sherman (shudder, throw up a little in my mouth, and spit a couple of times after typing his accursed name), if you get a chance, if he'd fight the battle of Kennesaw Mountain again with the same tactics, knowing what we do today, or just blow the damn train tracks to hell and back, muster the Army of the Tennessee, and give the now useless mountain vantage point a wide berth, following the strategy laid out by HIS commander, and moving on to the larger objective -- Atlanta.

That battle was never about the mountain, it was about cutting the supply chain to the forces Sherman knew his commands would encounter in the days to come. But he lost his temper, lost sight of the larger objective, and authorized his forces on the ground to attempt to take the mountain, losing far too many men, and depleting much of that Army's morale, and fought a bloody, costly battle for nothing.

Suppliers are like Generals. Some of these guys have superiority complexes, some are control freaks, some just have nasty tempers and no capability to control them, and others probably stay on Tren and Halo year 'round, and won't be around long.

Either way, once a supplier gets snippy with me I'm out -- There are too many reliable suppliers around, and let's face it, at my age I've taken about all the s*** I'm going to take from any damn body. I'm respectful, to the point, and honest to a fault in all my communications, whether business or personal, but once that first hissy fit gets thrown at me in response to a respectfully stated, undeniably documented, and valid complaint, I'll cut my ties and move on. Stress is something my day job provides quite enough of without having it added to by some guy on the other end of an email thread, not worth it. There's training to be done, and stress jacks up my mind/muscle connection altogether.

Like my Platoon Sergeant told me when we had drinks after I reported in for my first duty assignment after taking a commission many moons ago (I was enlisted myself until I made E-5, then shuttled off to OCS), "L-Tee, when it's time for you to be uncomfortable, the Army will arrange for it in spades. Until then, make comfort your #1 priority".

Same theory applies here. After all, Platoon Sergeants are never wrong, every one I've ever served under, or later commanded told me so themselves :-)

That's a rather longer way of saying "You aren't shopping at Wal-Mart or Target, folks", but I thought it might be worthwhile, to our newer users in particular to expand on that time honored retort, accurate as it is.