"Grantz, Sherry" wrote:
> Great ideas, Jeremy. You're hired. We (the 10% who do 90% of the work) will
> expect you to be at Oakland Coliseum next Sunday at 8 a.m ready to conduct
> the orientation and number the flag stations and maintain this log
> throughout the day.
>
> Oh, you thought the 10% were going to volunteer to take this on, too? Nope,
> we're already busy doing the 90%.
I am in the 10% in most of my endeavors (e.g.
http://www.stanford.edu/~jeremybb/beerstuff/wow.html) and I always resent
the 90%, so I endeavor not to be one of the slackers (and I will admit here
in public that I missed the first few minutes of my work assignment on
Saturday). I hope my comments are being interpreted as attempts to be
helpful and not grumbling. Of course typing in suggestions is not as much
work as implementing them, but I don't see making constructive suggestions
as a negative. Even if I never become one of the 10% I don't see how that
reflects on the merit of the ideas. I prefaced the suggestions with the
acknowledgment that they may not be good so why don't we concentrate on
whether they are good or not instead of whether *I* will implement them. If
you think they are simply too much work why not say that and omit the ad
hominem?
> Since I don't seem to remember you being an event chair this year (or to
> have volunteered for any upcoming events) and you want to contribute to SFR
> autocross, I don't see how you can refuse to accept our offer.
Was it an offer? Well, if people think it's a good idea to run an
orientation in the mornings (not my suggestion) I volunteer to do it when
I'm running in the morning groups. I will also be willing to do it at
another time, as I suggested. As for being an event chair you can be sure
I'll be volunteering for that too at some point, but as a newbie myself it
seems counterproductive for me to be an event chair since that will result
in a much more delayed event than we experienced on Saturday. What I have
been doing is volunteering for different work duties in an attempt to learn
them all so that I can be available to pick up slack where needed.
> In fact, if a whole bunch more of you people who show up, run, work, go
> home, and then helpfully type up all sorts of ways to improve events, would
> start putting in more time working at events we could probably run 275
> cars/4 runs each and finish by 6 pm (which BTW is when we have to be out of
> the Coliseum lot).
If members of the 10% could suggest ways outside of the work assignment to
help out I (and I imagine others) would be happy to do so. As I've posted
here in the past it is tough to know what to do/how to help out when you are
new. In fact that's the point of my orientation suggestion. A few events
back I worked set up. When I offered to work the course in addition to set
up I was dismissed brusquely by the event chair. I'm still willing to work
extra but such experiences reduce the incentive for discovering the best way
to do so.
I apologize in advance if I'm reading your tone wrong, but it seems as if
you resent doing 90% of the work. If this is the case can *you* make a
suggestion for how to change that? The only suggestion I can extract from
your email is to volunteer to be an event chair. I don't imagine quashing
well meaning suggestions is one of the best ways to lighten your work load.
--
Jeremy Bergsman
jeremybb@stanford.edu
http://www.stanford.edu/~jeremybb
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