I braced myself as I read Stacey’s email:

“Doug, actually, you do have the account documents because I sent them over last Thursday. See the email below. Going forward, please check your files before blaming me.”

I knew it was coming. I knew it. I’d seen Doug’s previous email and I knew this would be Stacey’s reaction. In regard to the facts, she was correct. We’d already sent him the documents he was requesting. Twice, actually. And, the tone of his current request was obnoxious. Even my initial thought had been to tell him off. But, I knew not to whereas Stacey didn’t. She thought it more important to win this brief exchange. And win it she had. She was the victor of this pissing contest and her prize was precisely nothing.

I used to own a condo in Atlanta that I rented from Nashville. Serving as a long distance landlord had not been the plan, but it was the circumstances I faced. For ten years I vetted renters, managed complaints, and organized maintenance all in the name of keeping the place rented. That was the goal. I couldn’t afford to pay the mortgage on top of my own bills in Nashville. I needed a satisfied tenant who paid the rent. That’s all that mattered.

For over a decade, I tolerated endless bullshit from entitled tenants and paid triple market prices for routine repairs that had to be scheduled during random hours. Every time I received a text that the rent would be late or got a Wednesday evening call telling me the toilet was leaking, my reaction was always the same. I wanted to tell them to fuck off, pay their bills, or spend two seconds looking at the problem to see if there was a simple fix. But, I didn’t. I couldn’t. I needed them to pay rent and that superseded any petty comment I wanted to make. Instead, I thanked them for the heads up and went about planning for whatever issue they’d relayed to me. It was never fun and it was always frustrating. But, it worked. That strategy worked in keeping them content and in turn that ensured they paid their rent. That was all that mattered and though it wasn’t easy, I made sure to keep that in perspective.

After ten years I was able to sell the condo and was made whole on my investment. Renting it during that period had enabled me to wait out the recession and allowed real estate prices to return. Perhaps sadly, the day I sold that condo was one of the happier days of my life. I was ecstatic to be rid of it and the burden that renting it created. However, the experience had provided many takeaways, the most important being that there is no point to winning a pissing contest. It’s often the proverbial winning of a battle while losing the war.

This was a lesson Stacey hadn’t learned. She was excited to have the confrontation high ground and pounced on the opportunity to prove she was right. But, in doing so, she was unable to see the broader picture. She naively saw this as a level exchange rather than the client-service provider relationship it was. Doug was our client. Yes, he’d acted like a jerk and yes, it was annoying. But, so what? His behavior was far from crossing any moral lines and he hadn’t asked us to do anything unethical. He was just being obnoxious. It happens. When it does, you work around it for the sake of the greater good. Our prize was in keeping Doug’s business for years to come, not in winning this trivial email exchange.

Stacey had decided to win a pissing contest. She’d gone all in to secure a meaningless pot. She was proud of herself for winning, but was yet to learn that nothing was awarded to the victor.