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.