The latest news, though I really don't know if it's entirely correct(Ooh yeah I Heard It Through The Grapevine!); The threesome that handled the volunteers coordination etcetera, has now been reduced to a solo act as two of them have apparently resigned. How why and when I do not know yet. Whatever! It can't possibly get any worse than it was.
Anyway, on with the story...
But It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time!
Someone introduced a rule about two to three years ago(when I was 'on a rather long leave of absence') to 'pay' the volunteers for their work not in one way but in two ways. Payment would be in tokens(a token has a value of roughly a beer or a coke) and there would be an administration in the office so everyone would know how much tokens they were owed. In effect it meant that the pay out doubled overnight; both a token per hour as well as one drink per hour. This was quite a change, a break away from the past, because when The Organization was just the Volunteer-driven Amateur Pre-professional Organizational Riot(a.k.a. VAPOR) that everyone seems to scorn nowadays, we just used to drink something while doing our work and that was it. Yes it cost money but there really was not that much abuse compared to the total turn-over of The Organization.
Frank Zappa's Cheapness.
The newly introduced administration system also allowed for volunteers to be able to 'save' their tokens, in a bank as it were. So a volunteer could take out some tokens when he or she needed them or one could buy other things with them like specialized education... Can anyone imagine that a volunteer who makes 10 tokens(while working from 19:30 until 06:00) then saves these token to buy training that he or she can use IN The Organization?!? Like First Aid and that sort of thing? In my opinion "Cheapness" (as Frank Zappa so aptly described it on 200 Motels) was redefined by The Organization; Instead of training your volunteers at the expense of the organization, so the quality of their work would improve, the volunteers had to pay for that training themselves. Needless to say that the tokens that people were owed where typically used to BUY BEER on the volunteer's night off, not on specialized training.
Balancing the books.
Of course there was another and much bigger operational problem with this system : The Proper And Timely Administration Of The Tokens Earned. Keep in mind that The Organization is open almost every day of the week so volunteers earned tokens every day of the week, which then had to be accounted for and administrated. After a while the delay in the administration meant that a volunteer had to wait an average of two to three weeks before his or her work was administrated and the token were added to their account.
A typical problem; a volunteer visits The Organization on a Tuesday and want some of his hard earned tokens. Sorry, no go, because there is no one present who is authorized to hand out tokens. This was 'solved' by supplying the bar personnel with a list of all volunteers and their 'credit'. This way the barman could make a note when ever a drink was ordered and these lists would then be entered into the database a.s.a.p.(otherwise known as 'In Two Weeks') by the official administrator in the main office.
Having Your Tokens And Having Them Too.
It gets worse : a rule was instated that said that a volunteer was entitled to drinks on his credit as long as the list had not been updated! Stunning!! Can anyone see the operational problems that this stupid rule causes? How about a volunteer who has 5 tokens/drinks on his credit and drinks them on Tuesday night. The same volunteer comes again on Thursday night and still has the five drinks credit so he drinks them again(although the list at the bar was updated on Tuesday so there is no credit left except in the computer database). The volunteer is now five drinks in the red and has to work five hours to get back to zero.
Now multiply the number of drinks because some volunteers had 35 credits on monday and had used up 135 monday a week later(until the list was officially updated).
So the problems that The Organization caused all by itself without anyone else to blame for them :
1. Extra administration that was not done in a timely fashion and therefore caused problems when paying out a volunteer.
2. People 'going in the red' on their credit, sometimes up to 150 drinks(!). First inadvertently, as time went by on purpose.
3. Double the cost as compared to the old system in which a volunteer 'just' got a couple of drinks.
4. Preferential treatment. As in serving the volunteers you like extra drinks for free.
5. Angry volunteers who have just worked their collective asses off during the weekend, and then could not get some of their tokens because there was no one in the office.
Introducing The Hard Line.
As I have described in a previous 'I'd rather go bowling'-item, The Organization ultimately discovered that their system did not work and worse; That It Was Costing Them A Fortune. So a meeting was organized for all volunteers(see previous entries) and a list of draconian and short-sighted measures were announced. To give one example; each cafe-crew ideally consists of three people; one barman and one DJ, and one backup for the two. Especially now that smoking has been banned in the whole building you need a third person to take over if one of the other two wants to go outside to have a smoke. Also; if one of the three is ill or otherwise unavailable you immediately have your backup available.
This crew-configuration btw, is what I was responsible for when I did the cafe coordination and it was an official agreement between 'The Office' and 'The Cafe'. Four people in a crew as the absolute maximum but three as the general number of crew-members per evening. However; as part of the new rules it was ordained that only two people would be allowed to work on any cafe evening, and that they would be allowed to have one drink per hour during opening hours(!). This may sound reasonable but it isn't. Opening hours were probably assumed to be from 20:00 until 00:00 but a cafe-crew would typically come in around 19:15 to check everything and to prepare the bar. The bar then would be open until at least 01:30 after which it had to be cleaned. In reality a bar-evening did not last for four hours, it lasted for at least six to seven hours.
Ultimately the result of these new rules was that quite some people refused to work for The Organization as they were of the opinion that they did not earn anything for themselves but for The Organization instead, and that this squeezing dry of the volunteers went too far.
A little while after having quit my cafe-coordinator work over all the amateur crap that 'the management' managed to pull, I suggested that maybe they should not pay the volunteers extra tokens but just let them have a drink while they're working. That would cut the cost of the volunteers in half immediately and they would all just be going back to the old situation that no one had ever had a problem with. Of course I did not get an immediate response and I'm absolutely not saying that my words had any influence, but a couple of weeks ago The Organization finally came to their collective management senses and did just that; the new internal policy regarding the volunteers has been revoked so it's all as good as back to the old status quo again.
Which begs the question : Why On Earth did no one consult the people who actually know how The Organization works internally? Who have so many years of experience that they have seen these new rules come and go many many many times? Because really; this has been one big blunder from start to finish and it has alienated yet more people. As if The Organization can afford to lose more motivated volunteers still...
Rocket Science.
If people want to organize things perhaps they should realize that organizing matters properly is a True Profession that you can study for at the University. And a little bit of emphasis on People's Management would not be a bad thing either. Because it really isn't rocket science.
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