What's In a Word?

The following paragraphs come from an e-mail sent by Heidi Diaz to Jeannie Baitinger, who was her employee at the time. To read the e-mail in its entirety, you can visit Jeannie’s blog and read the post “Stealing and Justifying It”.

Heidi wrote:

“Thanks for the nice words. The thing is, we all operate on trust on the internet. Most of our vendors charge up front, but the tech guys and affiliates work a month behind. They trust that I’ll pay them. I can’t betray that.

If we assume for one minute that maybe I’m NOT the person “they” are describing … maybe I’m the person you know … then it’s easier to understand. I don’t screw people over. I couldn’t live with myself. Really, I couldn’t.

Let me take that back. I resented Catherine getting 50% of the profits. She hadn’t done anything to build the Kimmer/Kimkin’s reputation. She didn’t have a reputation to help bring members. Her job was marketing which was … well, I’m not sure what she did because it didn’t produce sales.”

For the sake of retaining the context, I have quoted the first three paragraphs in the e-mail, but the part I am concerned with is at the end of the third paragraph. Heidi was speaking disparagingly about Catherine, Heidi’s original business partner who helped her launch the Kimkins website. Let’s look at the last part of the last sentence – “well, I’m not sure what she did because it didn’t produce sales.” Did anything in that sentence stand out to you? To me, there is a glaring issue in those words.

If you read her depositions, Heidi claims she runs the website for the purpose of motivating people and helping them lose weight. She would have us to believe that she’s a great philanthropist who cares deeply about people and wants only to help them. It’s the reason she runs the website, after all. But what are the words she uses in her e-mail to Jeannie to describe the members she claims she wants to help? Sales! They’re not people she has the opportunity to help. For her, it boils down to cold, hard cash. Members aren’t people to her, they are sales. They represent money.

Let us not forget that in order to keep the money coming in, Heidi must sign up new members……ahem……she must sell new memberships. She claims that people like me who are telling the truth about her are cutting into those profits. We’re affecting her sales, so she’s SLAPPed some of us with a lawsuit. We’re not stopping her from helping people, we’re denying her the hard-earned cash of people her depositions say she wants to help. But do not ever forget that to her, they are nothing more than sales. It’s all about the money, people! When you live in the alternate universe, your words don't mean what people think they do.