Thread by @AllisonStielau

Some personal news . . .
Mein Freund has been waging a seven-month long campaign against an airline that rhymes with Buyin'Snare. In October, his flight had been delayed by many hours, endangering the possibility he'd be able to meet me and my family for an important event.

Staff in the terminal told him to make his own arrangements and Buyin'Snare would reimburse him. But of course when he went to be reimbursed for an expensive flight to London, he was denied the money and told that the airline's employees would never advise him what they

had, in fact, advised him to do. Reader: this rankled. I understood his feelings of injustice but felt that perhaps more time and money should not be spent in wrangling with the great Buyin'Snare bureaucracy. But he felt strangely invigorated

by the battle of wits and of wills that ensued, over email and telephone. Hearing about these exchanges, their vague wording and deliberate obfuscations, on an almost weekly basis did not, I must admit, fill me with vigor. When he hit an impasse in communication, he visited

the original terminal and interviewed counter staff, who laughed in his face because of course they were not Buyin'Snare employees after all, but contracted workers, who were under no obligations to give accurate information to customers and thus when the airline asserted

that MF had received no such OK from their own employees, technically they were correct. Friends, he contacted the airport police and they commiserated with him sincerely, but were sorry to say that being misled by counter staff in the airport

was unfortunately not in their remit. I began to grow a little concerned about this side project of MF's. He turned to the Internet again, researching lawyers specializing in cases against Buyin'Snare. We discussed the wisdom of paying a lawyer more to fight the case

than the original emergency ticket had cost. We discussed The Principle of the Thing and what it might do for Others to prove that Buyin'Snare, in this instance, had been wrong. After some conversations with those lawyers, MF decided on a different path and that path, twitter,

was small claims court. It was at this point, after having almost wept with boredom and the futility of it all through countless updates on the Buyin'Snare case over dinner and before going to sleep at night over weeks and months, that I instituted a rule

that I would no longer be entertaining further discussion on these matters. "It is painful for me to see you waste your youth and your beauty and our time and money on this, but darling, you do you and I will just read a book in the corner until you decide to give this up."

It was a tough rule to follow. He'd begin, "I know you don't want to hear about this, but . . ." and I would firmly have to say, "I don't. Please keep it to yourself." Eventually he realized he had another outlet in the form of his ex-bureaucrat father, so when the urge came he'd

disappear and call him up to strategize about next steps and how to interpret the communications coming from the poor lawyer tasked with Buyin'Snare's representation. (Needless to say the ex-bureaucrat brought a zeal to these conversations and a tolerance for

considering the smallest detail at great length that it would be physically impossible for me to muster. Thanks, Fritz 🙏) There were a few emotional exchanges with the lawyer, and a respectful apology, but then things died down and I thought we'd moved on to another stage

of our lives. MF had done everything in his power, and he could feel good about that. He had fought for The Principle of the Thing, for all of the people who had been screwed over by Buyin'Snare in so many tiny but demeaning and stupid ways. He had seen it through, and

wasn't that really the most important thing, after all? We each have our own obsessions and we each have to do what seems right, right?

Well, tonight I got an email with the restrained subject line "yay!" Inside was a photo of the piece of paper spread on our kitchen table from the city court saying that the defendant (Buyin'Snare) was required to pay the claimant in full.

Given the absolute disgust I expressed about the Buyin'Snare saga for much of the past few months, my heart had no right to swell with pride and joy at seeing this photo.

But reader, it did.