business is business and all that

Cause and effect - a practical example. A person was recently almost sacked as a result of someone else writing lies on their blog.

How did it happen? I used to consider this blogger a friend until he attacked me in a personal manner on his own blog. I was accused of bad-mouthing him and the company he worked for, and apparently, while he worked with, and for, me, he heard me regularly backstab and generally 'do down' clients, business rivals etc...... I saw red and decided to fully investigate. I discovered that this piece of nonsense came from a new employee of one of our associate companies, who regularly plays football with said blogger. Apparently, he decided that the said blogger's boss (oops sorry, co-director) was being maligned and that he would report the (coloured) nuts and bolts to his mate. The only problem was that he seems to have embelished what was, basically, a strategy meeting, and decided to 'big' the whole thing up to his mate. The blogger (renowned for exageration) then wrote said nonsense on his blog and 'hey presto' this man's boss carpeted him for being unable to keep confidentiality ...was this fair? Unfortunately, I think so, especially as I just recommended this blogger's company to one of our clients that very day ... no more, for sure.

Problem is - morals and ethics go out the door when a good profit is sniffed. For our part, we try our best to be straight-forward and honest in our dealings - even when we are falsely accused... especially when it's by the same company that hit our website over 5,000 times an hour, with a testing script, when we first launched rocket-print.

So where does the 'business is business and all that .....' come from ?

Apparently this is something that I have regularly said - in fact for years (so the magical blogger says) .....the only problem is that NOT ONE of my family, staff or friends has heard me say this, ever. It's true though 'the internet is shit' or can be .... especially when it's used as a device to blacken peoples reputations unnecessarily.