Some people complain a lot. My last year in College I was in charge of a Summer Camp of 180 counselers and campers.
At camp our meals were designed by a nutritionist, and milk was to be provided for two meals a day. Arbitrarily, I chose breakfast and lunch so we wouldn’t have to mess with the dispenser. If there was any left over, I typically left it for dinner, for those who wanted it. Pretty quickly, this caused problems. There wasn’t always milk left over at dinner and some people felt deprived and complained about it. Fine, I thought, and told the kitchen staff that there should be milk at dinner every other day, and milk at lunch every other day.
Being nice people who didn’t want to waste, if there was any milk left from breakfast on the dinner days they just left it in the dispenser for lunch rather than throw it away. This caused anxiety to some people. On the dinner milk days there was a rush on the excess milk at lunch and suddenly a lot of people started complaining. Even the dinner milk people started complaining because there was never any milk in the dispensers when it wasn’t a dinner milk day, and it was unfair that the lunch milk people sometimes got extra.
From a few complaints, it got to be quite an issue. I even had parents calling and complaining about why there children weren’t getting milk.
I’d worked at this camp for several years, and before it became an issue we would typically use between 20-25 gallons of milk at a meal. When it became an issue, our consumption doubled.
Now, it is important to note that our meals are designed by a nutritionist, approved by the ACA (American Camping Association,) and advertised. Providing milk at all three meals was not an option. We had to stick with the nutritionists schedule or open ourselves up to liability.
It got so bad that the owner of the camp wanted to know why this was such a problem. He owned several other camps and none of them had a problem. Even the kitchen staff was getting mad about having to live up to a complex milk schedule that resulted in inconvenent cleaning times.
Finally at a reveille meeting of the entire camp. I announced that I liked milk at lunch and that it was easier for the kitchen staff to only have to clean and fill the dispensers once a day so from now on there would only be milk at lunch, and that was final.
A few people complained bitterly, but I refused to budge. I got a call from a parent who said their child needed milk at night, and had always had it. I responded about the nutritionist, and mentioned that no special dietary needs were mentioned on their child’s application, but that if they provided a Doctor’s letter stating that it was a medical necessity that there child have milk for 3 meals a day, I would personally make sure that their son drank milk 3 times a day.
No letter was forthcoming.
Though the reqquest for some milk in the evenings was valid and reasonable, the nature of human beings made it impossible to comply with.
After the milk situation blew over, there shortly came other complaints, involving other facets of the how camp was run. Some of these were also valid and reasonable, but I had learned a lesson. Before acting on them, I would decide whether they were worth the effort and potential upset. Most of the time, I decided they were not.
We did things one way for what were essentially arbitrary reasons, and that was that. They weren’t always fair, but neither was life. I did however change a few things as the result of complaints. When I did so, I did so with finality. For example, most of the camp competitions that had rewards associated with them were athletic in nature. This unfairly favored the oldest boys cabin. I made a scavenger hunt, art, and a sing-off competition so that other cabins would have chances to win, and they did.
After about 4 weeks, I began to notice that out of 180 people, literally all complaints that I received were coming from the same 15 or 20 people. No matter what happened, some of those people were never happy, and would complain. Some people would have legitimate problems that they should have brought to my attention, but instead chose to make do. By spending so much time addressing these same 15-20 people I was neglecting the other 180.
I decided to become rather arbitrary. When one of these chronic complainers would come to me, I’d listen closely, jot a note, thank them for bringing it to my attention and promptly do nothing.
I also noticed that the majority of people tended to solve problems on their own, usually quite ingeniously. For example, one cabin had swimming and then horseback riding immediately after it. Usually you need to go back to your cabin and change between the two, but I had stupidly scheduled the cabin that was farthest away from both the pool, and the corral with this onerous schedule. There was no way they could get back to their cabin change and get to the corral in time to ride.
What the counselor had done was have the kids drop their horseback riding clothes at the arts and crafts building. After swimming, they would hustle over to the building get changed before the next arts and crafts group showed up, and get to the corral on time for a full trail ride. The counselor had to negotiate with the arts and crafts instructor for storage space, and prevail upon the next arts and crafts group to take their time getting there in order to make this work.
Other complaints I was glad to hear. We had a case of a counselor stealing money from his campers, and another case where a 20 year old counselor was having an affair with a 14 year old girl. I rarely ignored a complaint, but I learned to consider it carefully before I acted. In both of the above cases I chose not to immediately confront the accused parties. I downplayed both incidents, and was later able to catch both parties in the act, and fire them on the spot.
Most of what I learned that summer held true in later life. Some people are natural complainers. Some people overcome difficulty and inequity without a squeak. If you ignore the former you are more able to help the latter. The squeaky wheel doesn’t always need the oil. Stop complaining and live life.
