The Pattersons : Clients of the able.

As howtheduck pointed out in response to my post yesterday, the Pattersons respond to major problems by not responding in the hopes that someone else will take care of things. For some strange reason, they fear, not so much confrontation, but looking like the bad guy. Let's take the first example he mentioned; Mike's troubles with the downstairs neighbors. Instead of having a sit-down with the Kelpfroths and actually getting to know them so he could figure out what they wanted, Mike wrote that slanderous article, after which he cowered behind Lovey Saltzmann. If he did have the sit-down I mentioned, he might had to admit he was partly in the wrong and that would never do. Each example follows the same pattern: a Patterson would directly hurt an outsider's feelings. Their inflated sense of self-importance makes them uncomfortable with anything that would suggest people might not like everything they do so to forestall that, they do nothing. It always seems to work out from their perspective because it gets done anyway. Their insularity, sadly, blinds them to the fact that the people who clean up their messes tell other people to avoid dealing with them lest they too be forced to put out Pattersonian fires all their lives.