My Newbie is Showing

Day 25 Prompt: This One was a Doozie

Day 25 Prompt for the "30-Day Blogging Challenge" : Write about a time you tried to help and ended up making things worse. What did you do to correct it? What did you learn from the experience?





I was working as a temp for a local lawyer. I had been doing temp work for him for quite some time and had hoped that I would enter full-time employment with this attorney. We got along well and he the trust level was pretty high in that trusted me to man the fort while he was on vacation in France. All was going well until a mediation position paper came due.


Unfortunately, he knew more about mediation than I did. All he told me to do was complete the mediation position paper for the mediator. In my head, I thought he meant to get it out. In my head, I thought a mediator was the same as a judge and that opposing counsel had to be informed every time you communicated with the Judge. In reality, I should have called Annie (the other backup temp) and asked her what the heck to do. But I didn’t and I managed to screw the whole thing up.


I got the freaking paper done and sent it to opposing counsel as well as the Mediator. Anyone who knows law sending your position paper to opposing counsel in mediation is DefCom5. In any other field, it would earn me the green wienie award for biggest blunder, sued, fired, etc. But in my case, I was lucky to just get a good scolding.


What could I do to correct that? Not a thing. We just had to deal with the fall out. I wish the conversation I had in my head was as forgiving as my employer. It was such a stupid mistake that really bothered me for a very long time. It was a tremendous learning experience because Annie swooped in and answered all my questions about how mediation and arbitration work, and cleaned up the mess that I made, such as it was. The whole experience taught me that the conversations I have in my head are oft times quite off track. The conversations in the real world where I really listen and really say what needs to be said are the ones where the truth is.