About a month ago there was a dog park meeting. Since we had just joined, Luca and I received only one notice about the meeting 1 day before it was going to take place. As it happened, we had dog school that night, so were unable to attend.
Apparently this was not an uncommon problem. There are 125 members, but only 25 of them attended the meeting.
During the meeting, the people present complained about this apparent lack of devotion to the dog park by the other members. About how part of the requirement for membership is that you perform community service for the park. About how they're going to make people accountable for the community service by refusing to allow people to renew who haven't done enough of it.
So. I signed up to do the website design.
A friend of mine signed up to be the beautification chair. He'd been trying to get a beautification day organized for some time -- about 6 months or so, but he doesn't know a lot about plants. He asked the people who had been in charge of beautification before him to tell him which were the plants we wanted to keep, and which were the weeds. He requested their help numerous times over 6 months, and received exactly NO response.
Then he organized a beautification day. Of course it rained, but he and 2-3 other people came after the rain stopped and did some gardening. It looked nice, actually. I mean, I don't know what the general plan for the park is, but to me it looked fine.
But then the people who never responded to his requests for assistance started complaining that he had ripped out some perennials. They complained to some of the older members of the park about how awful this new person was, and how he shouldn't have done anything without consulting them first. How much of their previous work had been destroyed.
And then people who a) never had any interest in beautification, and b) provided no feedback to my friend whatsoever BEFORE the beautification took place (and he sent many, many requests out) are all bitching and moaning about how awful he is.
!!
It's kind of remarkable to me, but when I say anything about it to Luca, he just says that this is how volunteer organizations work.
I'm now wondering if I've made a huge mistake to sign up for the website. Am I going to piss off people who want it done some other way? I am hoping that people will just be pleased to see pictures of the park and their dogs online, and that it will facilitate membership lists, logging volunteer hours, and payment, but given the outspoken opposition to the new person taking initiative to do beautification when nobody else stepped up to the plate for a year, I wonder if people will complain no matter what I do with the website as well.
Oh well, at very least it will be a good way to procrastinate.
8 Pearls of Wisdom:
Don't let the turkeys get you down.
Wait until you have kids and have to deal with similar (and worse) freaks in PTA type groups.
A University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) and University of California at San Diego, the research team consisting of experts in the fields of complementary and alternative medicine, integrative medicine, Western medicine, medical education and development a survey created its first survey question type 30 was distributed to 126 U.S. schools attention. Some 1770 medical students in the survey - more or less nationally three percent of the 68,000 medical students. Although the response rate to the survey was fairly low, the researchers say they provide valuable information on the current perception of medical students of CAM.
Ewe. Isn't there a dog park you can just PAY to go to? That's what I do.
Lol, stuff like this is why I stopped volunteering. There are *always* nasty people who sit back and wait for the do-ers to do whatever, so they can criticize it.
Or pile on more stuff to do for them, once they discover you do stuff. So they can criticize what you did later.
(Apologies for being a bit cynical & bitter today; maybe one-day one-shot volunteer gigs are better.)
Ella -- This one costs $62 per year + volunteering. It's pretty standard for the private dog parks in the city. I'd love to pay more $ and not have to volunteer, but alas, that option doesn't exist (and I'm sure some people would cry "unfair!!").
Our dogparks are not that way...no membership fees and everyone is supposed to just clean up after themselves...it worked great in Florida...and I believe it to be working well in Oklahoma...however we mostly just go to the lake.
FR -- We have free dogparks here too. The only problem with them is a) they tend to be overcrowded which is more likely to lead to fights, and b) the members only places have a screening process to weed out the blatantly aggressive dogs.
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