AACRC Success Stories
Sally and June
ABC Accounting is in the middle of tax season. The workload is impossible and there are only two administrators, Sally and June, who divvy up the admin tasks. It worked fine until this year when, at the end of every week, Sally’s desk was clear but June still had a mountain of work to finish.
Sally feels increasingly resentful: June is goofing off, and Sally feels penalized for being efficient and getting her work done. She and June used to be good friends but they don’t even chat any more. It comes to a head one Friday going into a long weekend when Sally asks to leave early. She has finished her jobs; June’s work is still piled up. Sally is told she has to stay and she just explodes.
They come to mediation. June admits she hasn’t been pulling her weight but she’s afraid her husband is having an affair and she just hasn’t been able to concentrate lately. They both complain that their bosses are not realistic about the amount of work that can get done by just the two of them. The two women agree to divide the work differently for a while and June agrees to let Sally know when she is feeling overwhelmed. A second mediation is scheduled to include the boss.
Dimitri & Michel
Dimitri came into the Center with Michel, his 7-year-old son. Since having an accident as a toddler, Michel has had a prosthetic robotic arm. Six months earlier, Michel had grown so much that he was fitted for a new limb. In gym class recently, Michel was climbing the rope ladder as usual when his new arm stopped working and he became stuck in the ropes. The gym teacher had to climb up and remove the arm to get him down. All the other kids stared and laughed at the sight of Michel without an arm. Dimitri was so mortified for his son that he stopped payment on the arm. The manufacturer of Michel’s artificial limb threatened to sue Dimitri but both sides agreed to mediation.
During the session, Dimitri’s eyes filled with tears as he retold the story of his son’s humiliation in the gym. The manufacturer’s attorney was able to see the father and son as human beings that had suffered as a result of his company’s product, instead of just a black and white court case to win.
Together, Dimitri and the attorney crafted an ingenious agreement: Dimitri would pay one-third of the bill; the company would forgive one-third; and they would divide the remaining one-third as a donation to a charity for children with developmental disabilities. The mediation allowed for a win-win-win solution that would never have come out of a courtroom.
Deena and Mamie
Deena was Joseph’s youngest, the pampered
one, among the ten children he raised alone after his wife passed away. At the
age of 75 Joseph finally found love again with Mamie, a woman he’d met through
friends from church. But Deena didn’t like sharing her father’s attention. When
Joseph and Mamie announced Mamie was moving in, Deena flipped out, pulled a gun
and threatened to shoot Mamie.
Mamie was frightened by the incident but was
also incredibly angry with Deena. The two women begrudgingly agreed to
mediation at Anne Arundel Conflict Resolution Center to appease Joseph. During
the mediation, Deena disclosed childhood memories of having no mother. She
recalled making Mother's Day cards in school, and to fit in with the other
kids, Deena had pretended she had a mother and then threw the card out on her
way home. Mamie talked about losing her husband during the Korean War and had
not expected to find love again. In a pivotal moment, she reached out to Deena,
said she was sorry about her unhappy childhood and hoped that the future could
be different for both of them.
Mamie and Deena worked through the session with the AACRC mediators, established a way to communicate with each other and established some boundaries. At the end of the mediation they hugged. Months later, we checked in with them. Deena had gone through AACRC’s anger management class, Mamie and Joseph were engaged and Deena was the maid of honor! Deena reported that she felt like she had a mother after all these years, and even gave Mamie a handmade Mother’s Day card.