Why Are They Just Standing Around ?

This is another venting post.  Feel free to skip it if you don't like reading my complaining.  I just have to blog this frustration so I can let it go.  Writing it down works wonders for me in that way.  Once vented, my anger or disappointment is almost always gone entirely.  So here goes ...

Tonight our youth at church had a service project for an older couple (not members of our church) who lost their home in the Black Forest fire.  It is a sad situation for sure, and I for one was really looking forward to helping out these people I didn't even know.  Good Christian service.

We (the adults and leaders) knew about this event for at least 10 days, which seems to me to be plenty of time to plan accordingly.  The objective was to cut up felled trees (from their burned property plot) and pile the logs in between trees and branches into piles to be discarded of at a later time.  This basically only requires a handful of things: volunteers (we had about 30), work gloves (most people brought their own), and chain saws (we had only TWO, and they were only BOTH working for maybe 1/3 of the time).

The volunteers cleared the branches and logs that had previously been cut in maybe 20 minutes (and they were NOT working very hard or fast for reference).  And then everyone just sort of stood around waiting for more work to do.  This would have been troubling enough, but the response of the main person in charge of the activity is what really revved me up.

He asked, very loudly, "Why are they just standing around?"  He was specifically referring to the young women who were there as they had formed a small circle and were just chatting up a storm.  My loud response to him (and everyone) was "There's nothing to do because this was not planned out very well now was it?!"  I cannot be sure he heard, but I know most of the other adults did and their agreement with my statement seemed pretty obvious by their reactions.

Compounding the issue is that this leader has voiced his disapproval of the involvement level of these good young women at other activities.  Well, maybe if YOU planned better activities that were sensitive to THEIR needs and encouraged them to participate AND gave them something to DO the whole time (instead of having time to just stand around), things would be better!

Wasting the available human power at an activity like this is bothersome enough, but when the planner of the poorly planned event complains about the 'waiting around human power' I lose my ability to respect them.


Song Of The Day:
Another song about love that I am repurposing the title of to fit into this post.  "Make Me Lose Control" by Eric Carmen provides a great theme song to help me get past the frustration I feel toward these kinds of complaining about others without realizing THEY could be the problem people.
I am sure to be a bit of a hypocrite here, so if you know me, let me know when I am passing the buck but should instead be footing the bill.  I promise to hear you out and simply thank you for your input.

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