Disclaimer: this is a post pretty much for pure venting. It's not poker related, but if you're not interested in a rant, stop now, catch you next time :).
Every once in a while you come across something that strikes you as so over-the-top obnoxious that you wonder if you're actually being leveled. My wife is president of our school's parent faculty club (PFC, another name for a PTA). She received a note yesterday in the PFC suggestion box.
If you have kids in school or good friends with kids in school, you might know how hard some parent volunteers work for the benefit of all the kids, not just their own. I would say Jennifer puts in about 20 hours per week volunteering for our kids' school, between all the stuff the PFC does, plus all the volunteer work she does directly in the classrooms. The PFC organizes two fundraisers: a Fall carnival for kids and the families, and a Spring dinner/dance for parents. The note below was written on a dinner/dance announcement:
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PFC:
Let me see if I understand this correctly...you want me to give PFC more money? Let's see...the last time I wrote a check to PFC was for a sweatshirt that someone dropped off at my son's kindergarten class and expected a 5 year old to carry it through EDCC and home. As you already are aware from emails to/from my wife, it never arrived (surprise, surprise!). Now, you want me to write another check? You **must** be kidding. Let me see if I can make this very clear to you -- **NO**. Please take us off of your solicitation list. If you would like to discuss this in detail, please phone me at the number listed. If not, *do not* send any more requests home with my child. **No exceptions!**
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Little background: immediately after being contacted by this guy's wife (the emails he was talking about), the lady who coordinated ordering and distributing the sweatshirts wrote back and said that she dropped off the sweatshirt with the kid's teacher who said she would put it in the kid's backpack to take home. Then she followed up twice in the next 3 days to confirm that the parents talked to the teacher and got their precious sweatshirt. The parents never responded back.
I'm sure that I'm biased because I have a firsthand look at how much a relatively few number of parents do for all the kids at the school, both volunteering and donating money. And it's my wife that the guy is addressing his note to. And now she has to deal with both this asshole and the school principal to straighten everything out.
Obviously, this guy has not done shit for the school. And that's fine, I guess. It is a public school, and I know that not everyone is in a position to give money and don't care to give time. But in California, our school systems are woefully underfunded (we now rank dead last in education spending, and are headed for even more school budget cuts next year), so if everyone took this guy's attitude, the schools would be a whole lot worse. It takes a crap-ton of extra support from the parent community for our kids' schools to be better. So for him to fire off a nice note like that to the very people who benefit his kid basically out of the goodness of their hearts obviously touches a nerve.
If you've made it to the end, thanks for bearing with my venting!
3 comments:
Clearly you need to send someone around to break his legs.
brick through the window with a "be nice" note.
Someone didn't love him enough as a child.
All joking aside, that is pretty pathetic. It kinda brings me to a point that I am very certain you share with me, but so few people really do think about this. It is easy to bitch about things, but not so much to make comments when things go right. An example occured the other day when at work I needed cooperation from another group like immediately. Long story short, I was on a super short deadline imposed on me from another party. Instead of having an attitude, this other engineer, who I don't know, went out of his way to drop everything and stayed late to help me. By late, I mean about 5 hours late. I sent him a really nice thank you note and separately, without him being on the email, I sent his supervisor a note praising his work and attitude and cooperation. Too often people only get notes like the one your wife received sadly and never get the praise they deserve.
fwiw, the solution to the problem with this guy is clearly DWarrior's thoughts.
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