Win Win

Back in the dim distant 90's, my pal Sooz and I used to share office space with a very ambitious person. Sneaky ambitious: she married a union organizer and volunteered her legal service to various non-profits catering to indigents. But they were the Right organizations, kinamean? Not right wing. Right as in correct. Vetted. Membership puts you on the road to greater gain. Someday this woman will be a Judge or Commissioner, but only for long enough to be able to retire as a rent-a-judge, making a lot more money. And still get a pension.

Am I sounding cynical? The Lawyers' Monthly mag did an article about her awhile back, praising her heart of gold. That's gotta be worth something.

Along with her pricey family law services, she was able to offer mediation. She had taken a course or two or three. She had a lot of respect for rules and there were lots of them in place during her mediations. Like anything else, it worked if people let it. She was a big proponent of win/win situations, so she said.

At some point during our tenancy in the building she owned, she asked if we wanted to share the cost of an expensive new family law service for computer. We agreed: we had seen a demonstration and, even though it looked clunky and complicated, it updated regularly, bringing all the new case law to our very desk tops. Well, not exactly.

Heart O' Gold had the only computer with enough memory to install this massive program. For awhile, her computer sat in our tiny library/conference area but then she moved it to the basement, to a new space she had created in an area not accessible from upstairs. To go there meant making a request and her facilitating it. To stay there and work meant feeling her waiting for you to finish and leave. Since it was cold and damp in the basement, there was no incentive to linger. I think I used the program once, for long enough to realize I would need to sit with it and play with it a lot before it became familiar and useful.

Then Heart O' Gold decided to sell the building and gave us a few months to find space to move into. Then we stopped paying for the program we weren't able to use. then she took us to small claims court and won. We lost. At no point was there a compromise offer, though she did offer to let us have - finally - the disks, which were out of date.Somehow, I didn't wind up feeling like a winner.