Size 4 Jeans

Volunteerism is so important in today’s world. I can’t even begin to think of all the people in the world who would suffer were there no volunteers to give their time and skills to help. Some organizations wouldn’t exist at all if no one stepped up to lend a hand and others have volunteers that do the work of twenty because there’s no one else and the need doesn’t go away. Why then, do more people not give their time?

I can give you one major reason: because some people out there think it’s okay to treat volunteers like dirt on their shoes, to be walked on and wiped off at the first opportunity. I’m all for doing your absolute best when you say you’ll do something, whether you’re getting paid for it or not. That being said, everyone makes mistakes, and there is usually more that needs to be done than anyone has time for, but the people who are not volunteering to help in any way at all have very little right to criticize anything, and no right to any non-constructive criticism.

Most importantly, if you have constructive criticism that you think will help the organization or the process, presenting it to the volunteer privately is the best way to go; sending your complaints out in a mass email to everyone in the organization is sure to alienate people, and will probably make you look the fool in the long run. Part of the issue may be the fact that it’s far easier to go off on someone in an email than it is in person. In an email, you can say what you want, and the fear of how they’ll respond is diminished, if it was ever there at all.

Volunteers aren’t always asking for gushing praise and thanks, though that never hurts either. But if you’re not willing to pitch in and help out, don’t tell the volunteer how to do the job (that they’re doing for free, remember), and especially don’t do it in such a way as to be obvious about the fact that you are trying to make that volunteer look stupid. It’s put up or shut up time, folks.

Are teenagers worse today than they were 20 years ago? What I really want to know is what we’ve done wrong, that we have a teenager who thinks the world owes her everything, just because she breathes. She’s always just one step away from being hateful because she can’t have something she wants.

Example 1: She’s been begging (okay, most of the time it’s more like demanding) for us to take her skiing for ages. My husband finally caves in, and makes arrangements for a ski week, including lessons for everyone (except me; I don’t ski and don’t want lessons either). She said she wanted to learn to snowboard, and my husband needs more skiing lessons and my youngest hasn’t ever skied at all. After the plans are firmly in place, the announcement is made, but the teenager isn’t happy because the trip is not taking her to Switzerland! So fine, she won’t go. She can stay home with me and eat frozen food. Whatever.

Example 2: She dropped her digital camera, which she’s never kept in a case despite the fact that we made sure that she got to pick out the “perfect” case for it when it was new. After dropping it (and probably due in part to all the prior abuse), it didn’t work anymore, and she expected us to just lay down the credit card to buy her a new one, post haste. “But what am I supposed to do without a camera?” she says. WTF?

This kid has a serious problem understanding the difference between rights and privileges. “Rights” in this family are: a place to live, food to eat, clothing to wear. This does not mean that I have to buy special food, like applesauce in single serving tubs (because she’s too lazy to open a jar and put the applesauce into a dish) or special protein water, or buy her fancy designer clothing that she likes and just “has to have.” The food and clothing just have to fuel and cover her body, respectively. If we’re nice enough (or can afford) to buy her special food and clothing, that’s a privilege.

Going skiing anywhere is a privilege, which is clearly not understood either. I soooo appreciate the school she went to in 8th grade that decided skiing was “team building” and made it a required part of the curriculum to send my child on the class trip to Switzerland that year. Read the rest of this entry »