Life's Not Fair!

Making decorations for the 8th-grade dance.

How many times have you told your kids, "Life is not fair." Mason is learning this, so do tell, what is one time you had to learn that truth?

One of mine was when I worked for an employment agency in San Francisco, I was the Northern California Regional Manager and one of my primary jobs was business development. I was visiting client locations most of the time and I would call my assistant when I had a job to fill and she would write up the paperwork and start looking through our database for candidates that fit the bill. I called her with an order for two positions that the client wanted to direct hire for (not temps this time, so they would just pay a hefty fee to hire them from us outright), so she did what she normally does, took the info from me, filled out the paperwork and off we went. People got hired and my payday came around and guess what? My assistant, who was relatively new to the working world, got paid BOTH of my commissions for those two hires! We are talking over $12,000. You can imagine our surprise when we opened our checks that Friday. I called the owners of the company and the bottom line was this, her name was on the orders that were submitted. Yes, it was, because I called the order into her to write up in the interest of great customer service. From that day forward, I didn't call another order in, they waited until I got back in the office the next day. Talk about not fair! But I will say, Karma came back around shortly after I left the company, the owners fled the country leaving their LA and SF offices hung out to dry because of tax fraud. 

Mason is also learning that people can be very kind, compassionate, and fair. A few weeks back Mason got in trouble at school. There were a number of factors to the situation but one piece of it was he ran up behind one of his friends and put his arm around his neck messing around like he was choking him. Well, he was choking him! It was forceful enough that his friend really couldn't breathe and got scared. In very swift actions the principal and vice principal called his mom and asked if she wanted the authorities called and in that instant, she said yes. We were all called to the school and as all the information came out it became clear that Mason did not intend to hurt his friend, he really was just playing and was being more aggressive than he realized. In the end, there were no charges pressed but Mason was suspended for two days and he was put on the list of kids that are not allowed to attend the end of year activities such as the 8th-grade dance and the water park field trip. Because this was his first offense, the school was allowing him to walk in the promotion ceremony. 

Not long after the dust settled on the incident, several of us moms were working on the 8th-grade dance decorations and the other mom approached me to say she thought Mason was being punished too harshly. He had written her, her son, and the school principal a formal apology and accepted his punishment. I let her know that I really appreciated that she see's Mason as I do, a good kid who made a bad decision, but I would not be asking for any special treatment or exceptions on Mason's behalf. It turned out that she and her son went to the administration and asked that Mason be allowed to go to the dance and the water park. They put their requests in writing, it was agreed that there was no malice, and all agreed Mason could participate. How about that? This is one of the times that life did turn out to be fair or at least kind.