(no subject)

[rivka]

Sheesh, volunteers.

I spent a few hours at church this morning, helping to renovate some of the Religious Education space. A number of jobs were on offer; I picked painting trim because it had the smallest amount of ladderwork. We were working in one huge room which is normally separated into classrooms by those horrible vinyl curtain room dividers, and there was a lot of trim - doorframes, bulletin board frames, and a whole bunch of built-in storage cabinets whose sliding doors had been removed. I picked a section of the room and spent twenty minutes or so carefully outlining my work areas with painter's tape, including the edges that were on the interior of the cabinet.

Just as I started painting, another volunteer came in and also picked Trim as her task of choice. She peered at what I was doing.

"Oh, you put tape all along there?" she asked, gesturing towards the cabinet.

"Yeah, it might have been a little bit of overkill on the inside edge, but whatever." The trim, it should be understood, is being painted a contrasting color from the wall paint. The insides of the cabinet are painted in the wall color. It's a strong contrast, so taping the edges inside the cabinet was only potentially overkill in the sense of "no one's going to care," not in the sense of "no one's going to notice."

"I don't think I'm going to tape it." She wandered over to the next set of cabinets. A couple of minutes later I was surprised to see her with a paintbrush already in hand.

"You're not taping any of it?"

"No." She called out to the Religious Education director, who was walking by. "Becky, I decided not to tape this. I think it will be all right."

"...Okay," Becky said. "I guess I'll just make you touch up the wall color, if necessary."

We painted. Time passed. And then, on Becky's next circuit through, Ms. Tape-free pointed out the quarter-inch edge where the trim comes out from the wall.

"I have a steady hand, but not that steady," she said, "so I'm not going to do that." She paused, and then said blithely, "I guess someone else is going to have to tape it."

And she meant it, too. She went on and painted only the front of the trim on her cabinet. And then she went on and painted only the fronts of the door jamb. She didn't want to bother with painter's tape, so she just plain didn't paint any of the little edges that came close to the walls.

I couldn't believe it. Becky, sadly enough, didn't seem to think that she could criticize someone who was voluntarily giving up her free time to paint the church. But... sheesh.

Comments

[brooksmoses]

Somewhere in there is a joke about Unitarianism and "Protestant work ethic", I suspect, but I'm not going in for it.

That nearly sounds like it's to the point of, "You're not actually helping, because you've done all the fun bits, while not reducing the work very much." At which point, I think criticizing is justified.

[curiousangel.livejournal.com]

To update this situation...

I went in this afternoon to put in a couple of hours as well. The little fiddly bits referenced above still hadn't been finished, and the trim just was wanting a second coat in general, so Becky asked me to do it. I taped it in a few minutes (fercryinoutloud, it's JUST STRAIGHT LINES), painted it all, put another coat on the interior of one of the doors where another volunteer had stopped after getting about half of it done, and then helped with all the cleanup.

Crap like this is why I've consciously tried to move the church away from using volunteers for jobs that aren't actively interesting. It was a nightmare when we had volunteers who sometimes counted the Sunday offering correctly, and sometimes entered the contributions into the member database correctly (through blind luck both times), but couldn't be bothered to learn the proper procedures, or sometimes to even call other people if they weren't going to be able to show up to do their shifts. Now, we have a professional bookkeeper who handles the counts, and oddball gifts get recorded correctly.

People don't like to think of a church as a place that does business, even if it's not a "for-profit" business. That attitude can spoil any enterprise that the holder gets involved with. Give of your best, even if it's only your attention and your care. This is a community that you're part of, and it deserves that respect -- if it doesn't deserve it, then you need to be doing something else.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

One of the things I've noticed is that some organizations tend to put things in the sense of permissions. "You won't be allowed to volunteer for X unless...."


I'm not sure how the marketing works, but I do know that it would probably keep the slackers away, and eliminate some of the hard feelings if you had to tell someone "you can't help; we said we can only use people who can (do whatever)".

I also think that it makes things a bit of a personal challenge. Will you be good enough to allowed to do (whatever)?

[firecat]

Crap like this is why I've consciously tried to move the church away from using volunteers for jobs that aren't actively interesting.

Yeah, I have volunteered at an animal shelter for a while, and managing volunteers is a huge complex job. There are always a few volunteers willing and able to do hard and/or complex jobs, but it's unwise to count on someone who hasn't shown enthusiasm for that kind of job.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Well... it'd probably be bad politics to criticize after the painting was done. I reckon he best way to handle it was to stop her before starting and saying "It has to be taped; there's no other way to handle it."

I think it's easier to be fussy before the job starts than to criticize after it's in progress.

Aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?

[nancymcc.livejournal.com]

How do you make sure that taping helps? It seems the paint always manages to ooze under the edge of the tape at some point.

(I feel somehow disloyal to my "heritage" saying this, since I grew up with a dad who went off to work at 3M every day).

Re: Aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it does bleed under the tape sometimes. Whenever I've taped to paint, I've always had to touch up afterwards. But I haven't had to touch up to the extent that I would if I didn't use tape. I am not the world's neatest painter.

[ailbhe]

Masking tape is so... obvious.

The stuff we have for when Rob paints is about 2.5" wide.

"No, that's the *opposite* of help," as Shrek might say...

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Glargh.

To give her some credit, she might have had a contact latex allergy and be unable to use masking tape. I've tried using it with the thin vinyl decorators' gloves I wear, and it just pulls the fingertips off. The only gloves I can use it with are the thick nitrile household gloves (like rubber gloves for washing up but with a much thicker cotton-based lining), and they are too unwieldy for it to be much use. A few times I've said "sod it" and tried using the tape with bare hands, and every time I've ended up with red, cracked, itchy, oozing fingers. Not fun.

Nonetheless, I'd usually ask someone else to mask a wall for me.

Remembering this

[brainwane]

Rivka, I thought you might want to know that I have remembered this entry ever since I read it years ago, and it has stuck with me as an exemplar of a particular kind of laziness and entitlement to only doing the "fun" bits of a collaboration even if that puts annoying work on others.