When they met it was... murder.

I have a bit of a dark sense of humor that trends towards the smartass. I find those sorts of jokes don't always translate well on the impersonal internet. Even when one goes out of his or her way to accent jokes with the obligatory ;-)

Just an example of how my humor plays out in real life I just want to share this short story involving a murder.

Last year one of the co-owners and his wife of one of our longest running and best vendors was arrested for murder. This was a guy that I thought I knew well. We'd been to lunch and golfed many times. He was a outgoing, personable guy. He obviously also had a pretty dark secret.

As it played out he got into an argument with his wife and she confessed to a friend that she was afraid of him because of what he was capable of. Eventually she admitted to her friend that together they had killed somebody years before. The friend went to the police and they were both arrested shortly thereafter.

They had been in business years before this with an elderly gentleman that they also happened to live with in a house they co-owned. They had gotten themselves into some financial trouble and decided the only solution was to take out a big insurance policy on their elderly partner and then kill him and collect the insurance.

Their plan was to slip sleeping pills into his meal to get him to fall asleep and then smother him while he slept. The only hitch was that sleeping pills are very bitter and easily detectable. After experimenting with different foods they settled on chili as being the best way to disguise these sleeping pills. I'll spare you the rest of the dark details but the chili worked and they murdered their partner and collected the insurance. Police ruled it natural causes at the time.

When he was arrested his current partner in the business we were working with called me in a panic to assure me he had no idea about his partner's sordid past. This story had made all the local news programs as well as the paper and their company had been mentioned by name. He was terrified they'd be losing clients especially us since we were their biggest customer.

I told him that as long as our company was kept out of the news I didn't care. They had always provided good service and this wasn't about to effect that. I tried to assure him that this had no bearing on our business relationship but I could tell he was pretty rattled and uncertain. (I found out later that part of why he was so upset is that this guy had tried to convince HIM to take out a big insurance policy "just in case.")

So I did what any reasonable person would do in this case. I sent them a gift box and a note. The note read: "Just to re-affirm our great relationship with Acme Company, I thought I'd send over this small gift to represent our esteem for the job you do. Enjoy!"

In the box was a can of chili.

I got a call from him right away in which he couldn't stop laughing.