more dismissals

Last Friday was interesting.

A few hours after receiving some badly-needed freelance work from Dismissed Date*'s business partner, the partner (Brett) called. It was about 6:30 pm. I was still at work but PD* was gone. He was personable, very friendly. He said he just wanted to put a voice to the name since we'd never spoken or met before. We talked about the jobs he'd sent over. He said he'd been very impressed with all the previous work I'd done for "them".

The conversation somehow made it over to the subject of DD. Brett came out and said that he thought DD was not happy with their current partnership, and he thought DD was making plans to depart soon. As requested, I played stupid; I said I knew nothing about it, and added that I had not spoken to DD for several months. (The second part's true.) Brett quickly changed the subject. I suspected he'd wanted to see what info I might have about DD, but quickly realized that either a) I didn't know anything, or b) I'd been sworn to secrecy.

Several hours later, I got home from a party to find two emails from DD. The first was a forwarded one from Brett to DD, basically firing him. I didn't know DD was fireable - I thought he and Brett had more of a business partnership, especially since they've been friends for about 15 years - but the email certainly sounded like he was getting politely shitcanned.

I felt particularly sorry for DD. Not only did Brett not have the spine to break up the partnership in person, he didn't seem to realize he was hurting someone who considered him one of his closest friends.

Then I went on to the second email.

It was also from DD but much shorter, sent from a Crackberry. He said that he thought Brett had been reading his email, and could I please not send him any email from my personal address. (This wouldn't be hard if the company's server was set up with Brett as administrator - no password would be required.)

This had me thinking, oh, crap. Now Brett knows all about the pervy relationship we had last year. Our emails left nothing unsaid. But then I realized that I didn't know if DD archived his emails or not. Perhaps he deleted them.

I decided to call him. He didn't pick up. I left a message.

About 10 minutes later I got a text from him, saying that if I wanted to tell him about my conversation with Brett, he didn't want to hear it. We ended up exchanging three emails.

The jist was that he wanted to go offline for a while (understandable), and if Brett offered me any sort of job, he recommended that I not accept it. And he said he would contact me in a week or two, although I'm not holding my breath. He's as upset as anyone would be if a close friend would choose to treat him in what I feel is a cruel and spineless manner. I'd most probably react in the same fashion - by hiding from the world for a while.

I hope he goes to see his mom for a while. I feel very sorry for him.