pettifogger

The Chool Bus (ch41)

CHAPTER 41: Buck Wellstone offers a different perspective on how Professor T can confound the extortion plot, reconcile with Ms Weiser, and cancel the court’s verdict over damages.

Buck Wellstone, troubled by the unjust outcome of Abigail Weiser’s lawsuit against Professor T, engineered a resolution not by the letter of the law, but through quick tactical thinking when reality hit Abigail in the purse. Namely, Professor T’s refusal to pay the court-ordered damages. Her plan was to cover attorney fees with that windfall. Instead, Professor T vowed to pay not a single penny. And now, she’s on the hook for Scheizer & Bok’s agreed upon fees. Without Professor T’s payment, she has no way of covering it. She realizes she’s in the same boat as her intended victim…she’s facing the prospect of financial ruin.

First, Buck and his dad have a conversation about post-y2k workplace dynamics the day after Professor T’s fateful court appearance…Buck’s embarrassing turn on the witness stand. So Buck placed a call to his dad in Texas. He knew his dad was interested in how the whole affair had gone down.

After three rings, Gilbert Wellstone picked up the phone and greeted his son warmly.

“Hey, Pops, it’s me,” said Buck.

“Well, if it ain’t the traveling prodigal cowboy,” said Mr Wellstone. “I was just settlin’ down on the porch swing with a brewski wonderin’ how your boss’ court date and your turn in the witness stand went.”

Buck was blushing, though his dad couldn’t see it as neither of them were partial to so called “face-time” apps on their phones. “Kind of embarrassing for me, and super-bad for Professor T.”

“Sorry to hear things didn’t go well for your boss, but why were you embarrassed?” Mr Wellstone was curious.

Buck’s face was heating up. “The prosecuting attorney seemed real interested in setting our testimony up as a way to reinforce the perception that Professor T was a sexist gaslighter holding Abigail Weiser’s career down, preventing her from advancing beyond the role of his assistant. Lots of yes or no questions. If i tried to elaborate in any way, he shut me down most ricky tick. I’m sure the judge could see how this belligerent line of questioning was frustrating and embarrassing to me. But i believe that was part of Scheizer’s strategy.”

“Sorry to hear it,” said Mr Wellstone.

“Thanks Pops,” said Buck. “But, this ain’t about me. The whole mess got me thinkin’…questioning workplace relationships in this era of ‘Title IV,’ and ‘Me Too.’  You know, how do we adjust to a ‘post-patriarchal’ workplace? I ask, because this dustup between Professor T and his office manager, Ms Weizer, seems to be a good example of the dysfunctional transition period we seem to be in the muddle of.”

“Take a breath, son,” Said Mr Wellstone. “Let me ask you this. You remember when Missy and i used to organize the Regional Rodeo parade every year?”

“Sure,” said Buck. “Missy Johnson always ended up doing most of the organizing.”

“She sure did,” said Mr Wellstone. “And you know why?”

“Good question,” said Buck.

“Because she was a whole lot better at it than me,” said Mr Wellstone. “Now, back then, folks sort of expected the designated Parade Master to stand up at the podium and command the proceedings. But Missy had the spreadsheets in her head before they even invented spreadsheets. I didn’t dismiss her input because she was a woman, and i didn’t step up to try and protect her from any heavy lifting. I just looked at the person standing next to me and said, ‘What do you need to do your best work, and how can we pull this wagon, together?’”

“But,” Buck was recalling a lunch conversation with Abigail after he signed on as a grad teaching assistant. “Abigale was at the end of her rope with Professor T by the time i joined the team. She was literally red-faced with seething frustration and anger over the good professor. I imagine years of frustrating workplace imbalances to be the cause.”

“Go on,” Mr Wellstone was intrigued.

“Well, i suspected there was more to the story,” said Buck. “And i found out later that Abigail had a major crush on the Professor in the early days of her time working with him. I asked her why she didn’t simply transfer out to another department. She said she was dutifully attached to the Media Studies students, and besides, there weren’t any openings in similar departments. She was sorta stuck.”

Mr Wellstone put his phone on speaker. “Didn’t any of this come out in the trial?”

“No,” said Buck. “And when i tried to work it in, the prosecuting attorney forced me to restrict responses to ‘yes’ or ‘no.’”

“Well, it’s settled, now,” said Mr Wellstone. “Perhaps you should have shared this with the professor’s attorney before the hearing. It might have helped his case.”

“I got the feeling Professor T and his attorney went into that hearing overly-confident,” said Buck. “They didn’t even let me know what i should expect from the encounter.” He paused for a deep breath. “Jack Dean and Billie Schmidt were just as unprepared as i, and all of us were shocked at the outcome.”

“Hmmm,” Mr Wellstone wasn’t quite sure what Buck was looking for, but pressed on. “Look, Son, you just got to reduce it down like grain into malt syrup, it’s all about basic eye-to-eye respect. Don’t talk over your female coworkers. Don’t take credit for their elbow grease. Treat them like teammates, peers, not fragile antiques or competitors you gotta beat. And if someone on the team talks smack, well, you gotta use your voice to level the floor. And by all means, make sure to clearly, and compassionately make your boundaries known. If your policy is never mixing work with romance, don’t do things to encourage workplace crushes.”

Buck made a barely audible nodding acknowledgement.

“You’ll be fine, i have no doubt,” said Mr Wellstone. “The fact that you’re callin’ your old man to discuss it tells me all i need to know about your character. You’re gonna do just fine. Just remember: you and your co-workers, regardless of gender, race, religion, or attitude about bull-ridin’ are powering the same work-place engine. Just step in time with them… you’ll be fine.”

“Okay,” said Buck. “Thanks, Pops. I think i just needed to hear from you. It’s a lot of pressure, trying to navigate the technology-supercharged workplace. I’m sure Professor T will figure it out, eventually.”

They made their fare-thee-wells and disconnected the call. With that, Buck went back to contemplating ways to help Professor T navigate his painful conundrum.

***

So, Abigail is tricked by her unscrupulous lawyers. In time, they turn the case over to a collection agency to recover trial costs she can’t pay. When she breaks down in tears over lunch, Buck instantly conceives the strategic value of her situation.

Buck recalled a similar meeting with Abigail once he was accepted as Grad Assistant in the department. He reflected on the depth and intensity of Abigail’s seething vindictive feelings toward Professor T, and so Buck hatched a plan and ran it by his dad over the phone.

Knowing that the clock was ticking, Scheizer and Bok’s firm was nearly ready to turn the case over to collection, and mere months before filing a civil suit, all the while charging 20% interest on the outstanding balance. Buck found a way to meet with Professor T’s attorney, and share his idea. They knew that Professor T would never bow to the court’s decision vis-à-vis damages to Abigale for egregious conduct in which he never actually participated. As well, they knew Professor T’s deep sense of benevolence would not allow him to watch this long-time comrade…even if she did agree to proceed down a wrong-headed, greedy culture-war lawsuit against him…suffer financial ruin at the hands of pettyfogging swindlers and their transparent extortion racket.

Buck put his plan into motion…Professor T’s attorney used Abigail’s distress to persuade Professor T that paying her legal fees would be an act of charity rather than surrender. Overcome by pity…and simultaneously pressured by Billie and Jack to kick the focus-group tour back into gear…Mork Thompson finally relents, pays Abigail’s exorbitant fees with interest, and secures the release of both himself and his former administrative assistant from financial ruin.

NEXT WEEK:
Back on the road go the Forks in the Cool Bus. First stop, South Florida, Key Largo, and Key West.

GO BACK => Preface and Chapter Links

The Chool Bus (ch40)

CHAPTER 40: The Forks take a holiday pause while Professor T scrambles to recover from his unfortunate holiday kick in the nads.

In the wake of the judge’s disastrous decision for the plaintiff, Abigail Weiser, Professor T woke up to find the local newspaper’s Sunday Edition had included a report/commentary focused on the absurdity of the matter in stark terms. The author was fairly well known in Professor T’s local area as a razor wit, with very little tolerance for puffery and pretense. He called the affair an exhibition of the great American farce. He said the proceding had offered a spectacle so perfectly distilled in its idiocy that one is forced to marvel anew at the sheer, unadulterated buffoonery of the human animal. That the case of Professor T and Abigail Weiser could stand as a gleaming monument to the contemporary battle of the sexes…a gladiatorial contest wherein the irresistible force of modern female vindictiveness collides spectacularly with the immovable object of male blockheadedness.

Not mincing words…here, read the rest of the column:

Observe, if you have the stomach for it, the plaintiff. Ms Weiser represents that uniquely modern breed of emancipated professional woman who, having loudly proclaimed her absolute equality and fierce independence, immediately retreats to the Victorian fainting couch the moment a bruised ego can be monetized. Harboring a simmering resentment over a romantic rebuff from the good Professor, she did not challenge him to a duel, nor did she simply seek out the company of a man with functioning eyesight and a pulse. Instead, she tripped into the defendant’s arms in his private office, waited for the exact moment of maximum awkwardness, and then summoned the weeping sisters of the Title IX industrial complex. Here we witness the crowning achievement of modern feminist jurisprudence: the magical alchemy that transforms the mundane indignity of unrequited crush into a $350,000 claim for “career stagnation.” It is a grift so transparent, so beautifully cynical, that one almost wishes to applaud her, were she not so entirely devoid of the charm required to pull it off.

But let us shed no tears for Professor Thompson, a man who proves, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that a string of advanced degrees is the surest armor against basic common sense. As a specimen of the American male, he is a pedagogical monk of the first order, wandering through life with the oblivious entitlement of a man who believes the universe is a purely logical mechanism. Confronted by an obvious extortion racket engineered by Ms  Weiser, he responded not with the ruthless cunning required to survive the modern American workplace, but with a naive, bleating faith that ‘truth and justice’ would prevail. What manner of colossal boob still expects truth and justice in an American courtroom? He is a man who absent-mindedly waltzes into a women’s locker room, utterly blind to the absence of urinals until confronted by a towel-clad fury, handing the professional puritans and culture-war hysterics their favorite ballyhoo on a silver platter. He went into a legal knife fight armed with nothing but the belief that his sheer innocence would shield him, neglecting even to prep his own character witnesses. He is the architect of his own public flaying, a martyr to his own magnificent hubris.

The trial itself, naturally, was a carnival of faux-moral outrage, presided over by a judge already emasculated by a spouse who makes her living shrieking about bathroom invasions. Into this circus strode the true masters of the Republic: Francis Scheizer and Brian Bok, a pair of ambulance-chasing pettifoggers who possess all the ethical grandeur of tapeworms. Bok, an Ichabod Crane figure hiding behind his fleshy partner, lobbed cheap provocations while Scheizer wept crocodile tears over the ‘utter villainy’ of a man whose primary sin was failing to return a crush. The legal profession has always been a refuge for scoundrels, but these two mountebanks elevated the shakedown to a high art, preying on the judge’s biases and the gallery’s insatiable appetite for witch hunts.

And so, the gavel fell, and the great wheel of cosmic comedy completed its turn. The judge, functioning less as a jurist and more as a high priest of the prevailing moral panic, awarded the plaintiff seventy thousand simoleons. But the climax of this sordid little drama is where the true genius of the American system reveals itself. Professor Thompson, suddenly locating his spine only after his head had been severed, pledges total financial ruin rather than part with a single dime to this judgement. Consequently, the victorious Ms Weiser finds herself abandoned on the battlefield, clutching a worthless judgment while the jackals of Scheizer and Bok turn their ravenous appetites upon her for their exorbitant fees.

The man loses his fortune and reputation to a phantom grievance…the woman faces personal and professional ruination at the hands of the very bloodsuckers she hired to soothe her bruised vanity. It is a flawless symmetry of mutually assured destruction. The battle of the sexes rages on, and as always, the only clear victors are the lawyers, while the rest of us are left to enjoy the unparalleled comedy of a civilization eagerly tearing itself to pieces over hurt feelings and misplaced faith.

As you might guess, this column was received with whispers and chuckles from Professor T’s hometown “coffee shop congress.” But, as a side effect, the columnist’s perspective gave Professor T an occasion to give Abigail’s motivations some deeper consideration. That said, it was a brief pause. He quickly snapped out of this reverie in the pool of compassion, and so then focused his ire toward the office of Scheizer & Bok. How to confound their rascally deeds… how to get revenge.

These are the conditions with which poor Mork T had approached the holidays. A sad state of affairs, indeed.

NEXT WEEK:
Buck Wellstone offers a different perspective on how Professor T can confound the extortion plot, reconcile with Ms Weiser, and avoid the enormous burdon of the court’s verdict over damages.

GO BACK => Preface and Chapter Links

The Chool Bus (ch39)

CHAPTER 39: The Forks return home for the holidays, and Professor T copes with a disappointing verdict in his troubles with Abigail Weiser.

Upon arrival at home base for the holidays, the Forks each made their way to their respective domiciles with friends and family anxious to hear of their exploits on the road. As Professor T was unpacking in his bedroom, the doorbell rang. When he answered it, a man served him legal papers informing him he was being sued for damages by Abigail Weiser, a long-time close work associate who had once carried a torch for him (Professor T) but secretly harbored simmering resentment for the rebuff after it became abundantly clear he was fully committed to separating work from romance. This sentiment, and maybe a touch of sociopathic greed, allowed her to be taken in by the idea that Title IX could be leveraged for a fat payday.

Enter former classmate and ethically dubious attorney, Brian Bok, Esquire. Ms Weiser booked a meeting with Mr. Bok and his partner Francis Scheizer for a consultation vis-à-vis her wish to acquire her “pound of flesh” from Professor T. And they (Scheizer & Bok) happily took up the case. She confided her complaint, and together, they cooked up a scenario where Professor T’s traveling companions would be forced to testify against him on a charge of groping the day they were to depart for Montana.

REMINDER: The scene has Abigail tripping and falling into Professor T’s arms at the very instant of the gang’s arrival on their way to the university’s cafeteria for lunch the day of the Forks’ departure. But this was no accident. Her timing was such that the witnesses couldn’t actually tell if Professor T was acting maliciously or altruistically. Too many question marks, and too awkward a scene for anyone to press for clarification. Of course, he wasn’t trying to grope her, and he had no impulse for manipulating her, a most competent administrative manager, into putting her ambitions on hold for his benefit. Be that as it may, Ms. Weiser, with the ethically dubious Scheizer & Bok, was suing for damages to the tune of $350,000…compensation for five years of career stagnation directly attributable to Professor T’s gaslighting and sexual harassment.

Professor T automatically perceives this as a conspiracy to extort him and pledges to fight the charges in court. With Buck Wellstone by his side, Professor T endeavors to confront the shady attorneys in their office, whereupon Scheizer and Bok encourage Professor T to “settle out of court.” It is a crudely transparent shakedown and Professor T refuses to relent. At this point, the extortionists begin baiting Professor T to call them out as “pettifoggers,” “swindlers,” or “thieves.” In the heat of this conflagration, Bok invites Mork T to assault one of them. Bok, an Ichabod Crane-esque personage, always offers these titillating provocations standing behind Scheizer, because his frail anatomy would not hold up to a physical assault. But Scheizer, with his gin blossom and pasty layers of bakery-dough-colored extra padding, could withstand a blow or two.

At this point, Buck Wellstone was shaking his head in bewilderment. He couldn’t believe the cartoonish encounter he was witnessing. Gently, he was able to lead Professor T away from the confrontation before something regrettable could happen.

***

On the day of the hearing, in the courtroom, Scheizer and Bok brought the university’s HR representative to testify regarding the Zoom hearing, where Professor T lost his composure and blew his stack, sending the Zoom meeting’s audio into a blast of speaker-shredding distortion. The discipline committee passed a verdict unhelpful to Professor T’s case, resulting in a bureaucratic process known as “chronic low performance”…a procedure that comes with suggested measures for correcting undesirable conduct in order to avoid dismissal…something they can do to tenured faculty now.

This, however, failed to check Professor T’s confidence that “truth and justice” would prevail, at which point Professor T’s legal counselor commented that that sort of outcome would be “nice for a change.”

As Francis Scheizer began his opening remarks, Professor T noticed the presiding judge was an eminent legal practitioner who happened to be betrothed to a woman Professor T had mistakenly barged in on in the ladies’ dressing room of the university’s sports complex. It was an accident. After all, who hasn’t absent-mindedly walked into the wrong restroom, only to about-face as soon as the mistake was apparent? But Professor T didn’t notice the absence of urinals in the space until the lady in question emerged from a stall with only a towel covering her private bits. He excused himself right away, but this particular lady was one of those bathroom-obsessed culture-war activists who made a point to shame Professor T with this incident…a prominent talking point featured in her many speeches against anyone, but especially trans women, invading female restrooms.

Scheizer continued this courtroom assault employing remarks dripping with bombastic sentimentality and faux emotional gravity, preying on the judge’s sympathies using this abominable bathroom invasion to great effect with a host of culture-war activists in the gallery nodding in solidarity. They called Professor T a “predator,” a “misogynist,” and a “sociopathic manipulator of coworkers,” preying on trusting souls with his bogus career advice and unfulfilled promises of personal advancement.

“Heartless… calculated… utter villainy!” opined Scheizer, with extreme emotional gravitas.

Professor T’s associates were called to the stand, and since he was so confident truth and justice would prevail, neither he nor his counselor offered any advice or coaching on how to respond to Scheizer’s belligerent yes-or-no questions. And so, Scheizer took every opportunity to harass Billie, Jack, and Buck to their red-faced embarrassment. And when the prosecution finished spewing all the bile they had in reserve for this workplace predator and his hapless character witnesses, Professor T’s attorney had no cross-examination questions for the witnesses.

It is easy to see where this leads. The verdict was delivered for the plaintiff, with seventy thousand dollars awarded for damages. The judge calculated one year of back wages, sufficient for Abigail to recover her lost time. Seventy thousand was considered a fair wage for a year in the position she felt she was deprived of by Professor T’s manipulative villainy.

Upon the judge’s announced verdict, Professor T displayed the countenance of someone astonished that an outcome this absurd could be rendered…it had to be a mistake. But the judge was not sympathetic to Mork’s cause, as he was not convinced something disreputable hadn’t happened between the defendant and his administrative assistant in the professor’s office before the arrival of witnesses.

As the litigants and onlookers filed back out into the street, Professor T again confronted Scheizer and Bok to let them know they would receive not a single quarter, dime, nickel, or dollar from him…even if he had to file for personal bankruptcy.

And so…Professor T refuses to pay damages, and the law office of Scheizer and Bok in turn refuses to waive Abigail’s attorney fees as promised, so now she too is on the hook for their exorbitant fees…which, of course, she can’t pay. Now, she risks her own professional and personal ruination as public sentiment begins to favor Professor T’s point of view. And why set this tragic wheel of futility into motion? Vindictiveness? Maybe, but responsible law practitioners aren’t supposed to be running extortion rackets either, and with the final outcome showing Professor T AND Abigail Weiser victimized by Scheizer and Bok, it may be safe to conclude truth and justice failed to carry the day.

NEXT WEEK:
The Forks take a holiday pause while Professor T scrambles to recover from his unfortunate holiday justice gift.

GO BACK => Preface and Chapter Links