Sunday, September 14, 2008

A Spy Among Us!

Well, well... turns out I had a spy visiting my Grand Opening! I'm really not surprised my competitor would do something like that since she was bold enough to email me directly and ask what my class schedule would be before I even started! When I didn't fall for her "oh I just sympathize with how hard it is to start a new business" line and tell her what she wanted to know, she decided to send in one of her assistant organizers to pose as a potential student instead. I wouldn't have even known except this girl joined my meetup group, so I emailed her to say hello, and then not even half an hour later I got a message that she had left my meetup group. I thought that seemed strange, and for some reason my competitor's name popped in my head. I went to their meetup group and sure enough, there's the spy listed as an Assistant Organizer of the Group! GGGGGGRRRRRRR!!!! I feel pretty ticked off about this naturally, because here I am just trying to do my thing and here's the snake breathing down my neck. It's one thing to look up my website, peek in on my meetup group, whatever.... but to send in a spy is pretty darn low. Of course I was nice to this girl and followed up with her, having no idea she was duping me the whole time.

Business is ugly stuff! I'm taking the high road here but I did want the spy to know I was onto her, so I just sent her a nice, quick little message stating: "Hello, thanks for attending my Grand Opening. Tell Ginger I said hello! All the best to you!" And of course, immediately removed her from my contact list.

When Ginger had emailed me initially I had stated very politely my desire to coexist peacefully. I guess being deceitful is her idea of coexisting peacefully! I suspected she might do this but I guess I'm just surprised she actually did, especially since she knows me personally and I am a former student of her classes. It's low. No way around it.




1 comment:

MiMi said...

I guess you could take it as a compliment that Ginger is so worried
about you and your business that she
would stoop to sending a "spy". I guess it also means she is not very
confident in her own abilities. And,
it does not say much for her business
ethics either.