Many years ago I had lost my office person to a better opportunity in Houston for him.

I knew of this young man that I thought would be a perfect replacement. This fellow was very good with radio’s. In fact he had been trained in electronic repair. He was a HAM Radio Operator. That would come in handy, because back then when most all of our dispatching was done with 2-way radios.

We had just started using computers in the business and Joe was already getting into computers himself.

This fellow was very orderly and organized like no one I’d ever seen. He had excellent phone manners and was polite to anyone coming into the office.

I figured there would be a few obstacles we would need to work out, but I knew with the obstacles he had been through during his lifetime, that there was nothing out of reach for this man.

Joe was blind, but it seemed like everyone has something hampering them. I was willing to try him out, with the stipulation that if it was too much for either one of us that we could opt out of the deal.

Back in those days I had a business partner, a guy that wasn’t directly involved with the operation of the business. It was more of a financial arraignment. I never will forget when he walked into the office one morning, soon after we got everything setup for Joe.

My partner came back into my office and shut the door. He looked at me and said in kind of a hushed tone “did you realize that new fellow you hired is blind”? I admitted that I had picked up on that. I went on to explain that I had known Joe for many years and felt like he would be an asset to the business.

That partner never did buy into to Joe working for us. I finally told Joe that it wasn’t going to work out. It was a sad day for me to let him go. That incident lives on in me as one of the biggest mistakes I ever made, not holding my ground, regardless of the outcome. But feeling like the partnership was bigger than just one man I got bullied that time. I guess I went more with the theme of pick your battles than doing what I knew was right.

No one ever said life was going to be fair or that we always do the right thing.