Eating Crow

Actually, crow doesn't taste too bad if you savor it a bit on your tongue. Today we had our meeting with my perceived adversary with the recycling of plastic at the sheltered workshop. I told him that even though he had said no to the project, we deserved our day in court, so to speak. He was ready to listen and I was ready to talk.

I told him all about my findings from my interviews with the people who are running similar programs around the state. I thought I did a decent job of laying out the information and presenting our case. Then I asked him what the real reason for our rejection was, because none of his argument were holding up.

Then he told me the real issue.  He had lost several of his clients(the disabled people he serves) to other towns. The money for that person goes where ever that person goes.  Because he was not able to fill those vacancies with other clients, he was out of that money for his operation, which meant he had to cut staff hours and not fill vacant staff positions. His program had also been cut $150,000. Since his staff had not had a raise in several years this meant that they were not willing to take on any extra responsibilities other than their job with the clients. Bottom line, understandably disgruntled employees.

Seeing the problem through from his postion made the entire issue take on a whole new light. I could empathize with the situation. It didn't get us what we wanted but I went away feeling a lot better about the answer.  I also feel that we healed the wound that had developed between us. So I actually feel good about eating crow and changing my perception of the situation. For some reason I felt good.

Now tomorrow I will share the great idea I found to solve our problem.