Mediate This...

I was involved in a mediation this past week.  That in itself is not that interesting.  I mean the process is interesting from a legal stand point.  Rather than going to a court like a lawsuit or having a panel of arbitrators and hearing evidence you sit in two different rooms and a mediator goes back and forth trying to negotiate the differences and come to a solution.  It reminds me a lot of buying a car.  You make an offer to the mediator (your salesman) and he goes to the other party (the sales manager) and tries to get them to accept the deal.  When they don't he comes back with a counter offer and so on until one of two things happen; you settle on a deal or you get so tired and pissed that you walk out and decide to take the other party to court.  But like i said, that wasn't the interesting part just the setting...

Lets go back in time a little bit...

When I was in high school and college we went to East Lake United Methodist Church.  During that time I decided that I was going into engineering for my career and we had a pretty big group of youth that were graduating and going to college around the same time.  One of the ministries that developed in the church was a mentoring ministry where an someone in the church would "adopt" one of the college students and help guide them as they went through school.  Ideally, the mentor would be in a similar career field to the student so that they could provide relevant experience and advice and possibly even help with contacts and getting a job once you got out of school.

My mentor was Jim Smith (the names have been changed to protect those involved).  He was the president of Smith and Jones Engineering which was a local consulting engineering firm that did electrical and mechanical engineering.  Mr. Smith and I kept in touch pretty regularly since I was going to school in town and was at church most every weekend.  He also made a point of telling me to let him know when I was close to graduating and he would see what we could work  out about some sort of job.  At the time the economy was not great and the job market for engineers was slow.  Finding a job was not easy for newly graduated engineers.

I entered my Junior Year of college and I began to look for a co-op job.  In engineering school you are encouraged to take a co-op position in the last couple of years to expand your experience and help get you ready for the "real world".  Quite often these co-op positions become permanent positions with many firms like Southern Company, BE&K and Rust (I'm dating myself since most of these companies have changed names).  I thought this was the ideal chance to go ahead and let Mr. Smith know that I was getting close to graduation and looking for a co-op job since he had made a point to tell me to get with him when the time was right.  I talked to him and explained my desire for a co-op job and he said that they were looking for a couple of co-op positions.  I went to their office (by now they had changed their name to BQR Engineering) and met with Mr. Smith.  He passed me off to one of the engineers that worked in the mechanical department.  I got an interview and a tour of the building.  I thought I was on my way.  A week went by and I didn't hear anything so I checked with Mr. Smith at church and he said that he would see what was going on.  Another week went by and I didn't hear anything.  I called him and he told me that they had filled the positions.  He said that he was sorry but that it was the mechanical engineers decision and he had chosen someone else.  He then told me not to worrry that he would "take care of me" next time and make sure that didnt happen again.  I was disappointed but I felt like I still would have a job in a year or so when I got out of school.  In the mean time I got a co-op position with the City of Birmingham Engineering Department.  We didn't really do that much but I got to do a lot of home work.

Another couple of years passed and graduation was getting close.  My co-op job with the City was just a co-op and would end when I graduated so I had to start looking for a "real" job.  I remembered what Mr. Smith had told me and called him again thinking that this time would be different and I would have a job that would become a career and I would be able to take care of my new wife and provide for her and the family that we wanted to have.  He asked me to come down and talk to him so I did.  I went to his office and we had a nice talk and at the end he told me that he didn't have anything right now but that he would call me as soon as a position was available.  I told him that was great and that I was willing to do anything to get started.  He said that he understood.  I left, again thinking that a job was a sure thing and that I would be hired soon.  Weeks turned into months and no job ever materialized.  Finally, the time was approaching for my wedding to Melinda and i knew that I had to find some job that I would be able to have insurance for us so I finally went to work at Randy's Computers selling computers.  In over 2-1/2 years I was unable to get a job doing anything at BQR after virtually being promised a job.  The rest is history; I finally got a job at Miller and Weaver and from there joined BBG&S Engineering as a partner.

Back to 2012...

So the week before the mediation the attorney for the side that I was assisting called me to go over the process and told me that the way mediation works is that your party sits on one room and the other party sits in the other room and you rarely if ever see each other and the mediator goes between them negotiating the dispute.  This put me at ease a little since the engineering firm that is in the dispute is the one where I tried to get a job and Mr. Smith was the president.  Now we work with them on some projects so I have to interact with them on a regular basis.  Well of course the first thing that the mediator does is put us in the same room to start.  And to make matters worse the president  of the company is the one that came to represent them in the mediation.  Did I mention that he is the son of the guy that didn't give me a job on two occasions???

Wait...

Why am I upset?

Dont I want to stick it to them a little?

No, thats not the way I am, thats not how I roll.

Well ok I'd be lying if I said there wasn't a part of me that enjoyed it a little.

Anyway, it was more awkward than anything.  I just didn't like being in the room with them and having to tell them all of the things that their firm screwed up on this project.  Its a first for me and I don't hope to repeat the process either as a member of the prosecution or defense.

What I really thought about most of the time was how all of this might have been different if they had given me that job so many years ago.  Would I have been the engineer on that project?  Would I have been able to make a difference and keep them out of the court proceeding?  Would I have been the one making the huge mistakes and costing the company thousands of dollars in legal fees and settlement costs?  How would my life and my career been different?  How would the reputation of that company been different?  These are all interesting questions that I have no answers to?

I just find it very ironic that I was the one who was calling them out on their mistakes and that my testimony is the one that prevented them from getting out of the case and forced them to have to go to mediation and settle.  I guess the moral of the story is that you should beware of even making what appear to be small mistakes in life because you never know which ones are going to come back in a big way and bite you in the ass later down the road.