say "gah"
April 10, 2003 03:11 PM

Gah!

The challenge of managing a volunteer team seems to be that people keep quitting on you. [Actually, thinking back to the Some Girls Design project, it's obvious that you don't even need a manager to have people quit on you constantly.] Or it would be a challenge, even what people in the business community like to call an "opportunity" [it's a hedgy way to say "ass-sucking vortex of death"] - if it weren't for the fact that you, too, would like to quit.

Can you quit on yourself?

I guess then you're quitting on your team members, or your customers, or something like that. Because I would have a really easy time quitting on myself, but not so easy when others are involved.

So, yes. I manage a team of volunteers. They keep leaving the state and becoming very busy and basically - like I said - quitting on me. It starts to feel like you're begging after awhile.

Gah.

These aren't what I think of as the usual volunteering suspects, from my non-profit days. Meaning, basically - sweet, deaf old ladies with loads of history and gossip who turn into raging monsters of hell if you slightly vary their routine. No, these are the complete opposite. Which is worse, in a way. The sweet old ladies always seemed so replaceable; there was an endless stream of them in town. But these people I've had to cajole and take to lunch and all that.

I don't usually even go out for lunch. In theory, I leave the office sooner that way. [Except not, but that's unrelated to the issue under discussion.]

Gah.

This all ties back to the issue I mentioned before, about not being clear that my career, and this career-advancing stuff, is actually how I even want to be spending my time. And while I'm sitting around not quite having answers for myself, my nascent team is dropping like flies in a RAID-filled room.