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“Shit.” I really wanted to wipe it all away. Thought it would be just as easy to wipe out as it had been to post. Oh, why had I been so mean? “So, there’s no way?” Crushed, I sagged into my seat and rested my elbows on the table.
“We could try removing a review, and then reaching out to Google to de-index it so remnants won’t appear in search results.”
“That sounds… Pricey.”
She nodded ever so slightly. “There are entire companies devoted to reputation management, but yeah, they’ll cost you a lot. Although I’d be cheaper, I’d also be less effective since this is outside of my normal marketing and design forte.”
Of course, that’s how everything naturally went as far as I was concerned. I could post all I wanted but removing them all was going to take all the extra income I had coming in to clean it all up, likely putting me into further debt, rather than coming out ahead. Why I had been so foolish? Once should’ve been enough, but noooo, I had to keep at it; like picking a healing wound. Keep picking at the scab until it bled, and once it had scabbed again, pick at it some more.
I was a major idiot. And Birch Bay Burgers became the metaphorical punching bag when I ate his spoiled food, which made me violently ill, and nearly took away the baby I never thought I’d ever have, and then I got fired from a job paying me under the table so I lost my living accommodations on top of that.
But did it help? Nope. Now I was going to be back in debt to fix up something I should’ve just let go years ago.
“Let me see what I can do. What’s the name of one account?” With the pen in her hand, she was ready to scratch down whatever information I could give her.
“Off the top of my head, I don’t know. I have some of them written down at home somewhere.”
“Passwords and all?” Her eyes narrowed.
“Yeah, think so.” But I wasn’t so sure. It’s not like I knew at that time I’d need to keep the information for deletion years later.
“It’s not a safe thing to keep your passwords written down, unless it’s in a password protected app.”
“They’re not.” I wasn’t even sure where the piece of paper was that had the emails and passwords listed.
She grabbed her pastry and took an eye-rolling good bite. “Eric brings these home every week, and I swear, they get better tasting each time. Damn, I love this bakery.”
“They are addictive.” I took a bite of mine as well.
“Anyway, back to your dilemma. How far back are we talking here? Like a few weeks, months? Are they on social media accounts?”
“Yes, several social media accounts, and I can remove those, but I’d like to make sure everything on the net is wiped out, so it could never be traced back to me.”
“As if that account never existed?”
“Exactly.”
“Well, here’s the thing, whatever you put on there is on there forever. Someone could’ve taken a screenshot.”
My face fell, and I had to lift it off the table. “For real?”
“What do you want off the web so bad?” She wiped the corner of her mouth with her napkin and took a sip of her herbal tea. “If I’m going to be hired, I will have to know anyway.”
I glanced around again, my gaze darting around to the staff. No one was within earshot. “Reviews I’ve left on a company.”
“That’s not so bad. Everyone leaves reviews, it’s helpful to the company.”
“Not when they are negative.”
“But not libelous?”
I tipped my head to the side, not understanding.
“Slander is spoken, libel is written.”
“No, everything I wrote was true. I got food poisoning from a product he sold. Although it’s his word against mine, I was hospitalized for a few days since I was also pregnant at the time.” I stared at the crumbs gathering on the plate. “Normally, I wouldn’t be so bothered with having left the bad reviews, but I’m dating the owner of the place now, and I’d rather not have him find out it was me leaving the nasty reviews.”
The doorbell rang out, and my focus jumped over to an older couple stomping their way in, dropping their umbrellas into the stand by the door. They looked familiar, but I couldn’t place them.
