Howdy Ho boys and girls! In the midst of your post-Christmas – pre-New Year’s – do I seriously have to go back to work? stupor, I welcome you back to Crooked Letterz, the place where we look at the darker side of life and point fingers and laugh. I am your host, Christopher Starr, and THIS is Dis MuthaFucka Right Here – Poking the Bear Edition (edition edition edition)

I gotta get some fireworks or something.

Now before I get started, I have to say a word of thanks for the kind words, well wishes and general good will. You guys have been incredibly patient and I appreciate you sharing my concern over my wife during her Big C diagnosis and surgery and offering your condolences after my grandmother’s passing. I sincerely appreciate it—more than you’ll ever know.

But it is time to get back to it. We’re gonna get back to our villainy business in 2013 (promise!) with the conclusion of Mayhem of the Mouse and the rest of the Festival of Fiendishness (I gotta get to 100 villains) but for now, I have something a little different in mind.

Lemme get my John McCain on: my friends, today’s post is pretty special.

As 2012 winds to a close, I am inspired to look back at some of the fun times we’ve had together: you laughed at me walking my dog with Hello Kitty earphones, we looked at about 65 of our favorite villains, broke Disney World, and we saw the rise of DMFRH with The Boy, Shawn T (punk ass), and me. As a matter of fact, 2012 has been quite the year for muthafuckas. Lucky for you, I saved the best for last. Consider it my gift to you…

Earlier this year, I broke from the dark stuff to write a sappy, saccharine-laced post called Pursue Your Happyness. It was about my wife finding her happy place planning Disney vacations for people who feel perfectly at home with man-sized mice and what I am convinced is a rabid duck in a sailor’s suit. And NOBODY has pants. What’s wrong with pants?

But that’s beside the point.

That post centered around her joining an Authorized Disney Vacation Planning agency (who shall remain nameless—but whose initials are Blue Sky Journeys). The company was truly an American story: started by a young couple with $30 and dream, grew to have national reach and about 30 planners. It was cool shit. I was happy for my wife and happy she’d joined such a close-knit “family.”

Until shit got stupid.

See, I’ve worked with large and small companies, startups, nonprofits and Fortune 500s. I’ve made my share of clerical errors and full-scale fuck ups. I don’t begrudge mistakes. I take issue with how you deal with them. And in each of those instances, with each of those organizations, when I departed, my departure was handled with professionalism, courtesy and decorum.

I guess you can imagine that’s not exactly what happened.

And if you’re wondering why I’m saying it at all, it’s because someone told me not to. Not to publish “ONE THING.” That reverse psychology Jedi mind trick bullshit doesn’t work on me. I slept with a woman 14 years my senior who worked at my college because somebody told me not to. I moved out of my mother’s house 16 hours after moving in because somebody told me what not to do. If you don’t want me to publish it, you probably shouldn’t say stupid stuff in email. To me. Or on voicemail. Dummy.

So, gather ‘round kiddos and let me tell you the story of Dees Muthafuckas Right Here. Once upon a time, there was a girl with a dream about making people pay ridiculous prices for mouse-themed vacations. So she found an agency to make her little dream come true. Now, for a variety of reasons (the final one being served with a Cease and Desist for simply doing her job with the tools given) the girl—my wife—decided it was best to part ways with her homey little travel agency and penned this resignation letter:

It’s relatively standard, right? Maybe adds a little more specificity than I would have but it’s essentially “I’m out, pay me what you owe.” And it garners an appropriate response:

Now if that were the end of this story, it’d be sad indeed. Lucky for all of us, our friends in Tennessee do not disappoint. A couple hours later, this strolls into the Inbox:

Wait, what?

Suddenly, things aren’t so magical. Or grammatically correct. I think we’re in HUDGE trouble…

Now I know what you’re thinking: “Chris, this is awfully one-sided. You’re only posting their stuff.” And you’d be right: it’s my blog. My house, my rules. And we’re the good guys. But I hear you, I hear you—so I’ll post Amanda’s response. But before I do, I want you to notice 2 things: 1) this is the owner of the company talking; and 2) she copied everybody and their mama on it. All 30 of those planners, some of them friends, received the same email.

So Amanda copied them too:

The email was bad enough. But they really didn’t appreciate the Reply All. Not one bit (you gotta say it in the Joker voice).

This is only the beginning: this story gets SOOOOO much better–you gotta keep reading for Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and the Greatest Hits, all featuring:

• More emails!
• Legal threats!
• A drunk ass voicemail!
• And then – Chris gets involved!

“You knew this was coming, Pete.” – Harry Osborne, Spiderman 3