Fuck OFF.
I have told you about this before – I may not be the most experienced leader of people or coordinator of volunteer efforts, but I have a tiny bit of experience, having spent several years as an administrator for an online site of idealistic, committed volunteers, albeit for a fairly narrow and specific cause, and I do know a thing or two about human nature.
I know you’re committed to your cause. I know you have strong emotional feelings about it. I know you care. I know you’re overworked. But you have got to learn, don’t needlessly abuse your volunteers!
For fuck’s sake, they care too, that’s why they got off their asses to help out in the first place. They signed up for effort, time, money, and emotional investment in the great cause, whatever it is.
What they DIDN’T sign up for was for you, the “leader” to act like your commitment is so much greater than anyone else’s. Or for you to view their dedication with suspicion and require them to “prove” themselves. Or to take care of stuff no one else will bother to do – if you and the long-term volunteers can’t be bothered, why should the new person do it, especially if you openly suspect laziness, incompetence, or ulterior motives from your new volunteers?
I make no claims to be a great leader, but I by Gid cherished the volunteer spirit in everyone who helped the organization I was working with; I listened to their ideas, offered them the chance to get more involved, trusted them to mean well, and when they messed up, I broke it to them gently and privately and tried to find the positive in the situation. The dedication to get off one’s ass and come help do the hard stuff is a fragile thing, people! It’s EASY for volunteers to not show up.
What brings this rant on today is my attempts to help out as a bottom-level peon in a completely different organization. I don’t mind carrying water and doing front-line grunt-work; it’s what I signed up for. But the local coordinator has repeatedly yelled at me while giving directions – even when the directions turned out to be elaborately wrong, like giving driving directions from faulty memory and sending me to what is inescapably the wrong building. And the “regional” coordinator regarded my willingness to help with great suspicion, choosing to believe that I secretly might be an animal abuser instead of a volunteer. And the people at the sites thought I was an intruder, and came close to arresting me, even though I was given explicit instructions to be there.
And no one wants to listen to any ideas – in particular, they keep sending people out with really vague verbal directions: “You know that place near the front but not too near, with a triangular planter?” and have turned down my suggestion to simply NUMBER the sites, so we can say “at Site 7, I saw…” instead of “OK. Remember the second place we went six months ago – the one near the shopping center that used to have the Target? Well, turn left there – or maybe it’s the second left – and look for the pink building that looks industrial…” Honestly, the sites are fixed positions and you could just put a sticker there and make a mark on Google maps and you’re set.
What sparked this rant was an especially obnoxious request today. The person who yells at me called and asked me to visit a site (vaguely described, of course, with a lot of “all right, do you know the road behind the hospital?” kind of phrases) because that person, the yeller, had forgotten to visit it for three days running. She had, in turn, been asked to do it by the coordinator who thinks I might be a sociopath in disguise, seeking to infiltrate the organization, because HE has better things to do with his time.
Then it was stressed to me that this is urgent because suffering might theoretically be involved. I mean, there’s no evidence of suffering; no reports of suffering; but the “what if they’re suffering” card got played when I seemed reluctant to drop what I was doing and go do it – while the yelling coordinator goes off to do a fun public event and the suspicious organizer can’t be bothered to drive out this far.
So be nice to your volunteers, folks, especially if you want them to do the dirty work you don’t feel like doing.
DAMMIT. I want to help, I don’t want to be a quitter, but really. Playing the “hypothetical suffering” card to prod me is a low blow.