I joined the Social Committee for our building. Most of the residents are quite a bit older, but there are a lot of younger ones, too. We have a couple of big parties and a few happy hours a year. It’s nice. We like nearly all of our neighbors.
My first offering/task was to set up an email list. I did this because I had joined the committee months earlier, but was never invited to a meeting. They were just using Reply All, so it was difficult to get added in. I fixed that with a few clicks.
Through planning and the event, I met L. We have a lot in common and both like to be organized in our approach. We became fast friends.
I got tons of compliments on my first event with the group. I did the tablecloths…and to do that, I needed to do the layout, so I did. It was the smoothest of those events because I created a good traffic flow.
Another committee member, J, happened to be in the room when I was setting up the tables and my tablecloths. She offered to help, so we chatted while we worked. She clearly knew nothing about events and she has no eye for basic things like centering a tablecloth, but seemed eager to learn. She agreed with my logic on some things like not using the tall counter to serve food since we have several residents who use wheel chairs.
Sidenote: There is a bit of a language and culture barrier. J has a difficult time finding the right words and a worse time pronouncing English. Everyone is really patient with her on that, but we don’t all always understand her words or her meaning. Oh, and J wants to have a charity component to every event. No one else wants to do the things she wants due to timing or fit or lack of research on her part.
It wasn’t a perfect event, but it was considerably better than some of the past ones. As an after-action, L and I set up a Google sheet to track spending.
Just one meeting later, I was asked to chair the committee, L offered to co-chair, and we were pumped. We used the same Google sheet to devise a task list from a template in Google Sheets.
J offered to set up a playlist and some speakers. I think that’s overkill (and that guests will turn it down so they can talk, which we all know will piss her off), but she was excited, so I told her to go for it. She brought it to the next meeting to show everyone, loudly. She’s not wrong about it being better than just putting the tv on the xmas channel, but people are there to socialize. “The music was too loud” is a regular complaint.
At the next meeting, I congratulated our outgoing chair, D, (she’s joining the board for the building, a “promotion” of sorts) and explained the transition. I thought that went fine.
We used the spreadsheet to note who volunteered to oversee which part, set deadlines, etc.. It kept the meeting on task a little bit and made sure we didn’t forget to address any important parts. We can reasonably expect about 40 people at this party.
(What I now suspect is that J was upset that two newbies were picked to lead …over her. [1])
So, cue the drama that monkeyed with my personal deadlines. It always comes in massive emails, doesn’t it?
J wrote everyone to explain what Costco is. Yes, really. She listed things we could get there including paper products, food, and meats. She even offered to help people find the store if they don’t know where it is (and if they don’t have a phone, I guess). When we reminded her that we are ordering paper products from Amazon and aren’t providing food at this potluck, she annoyingly declared that beverage is part of food, “So please don’t get it wrong what I really meant based on your perceptions.” Um. okay; I guess we’ll know what you were thinking and not consider the words you wrote. ::sigh:: Everyone left that email alone. Maybe she was mad that no one agreed with her, because…
Next came the novel. It was mostly about decaf coffee. She got into the minutiae of who would be in charge of tiny things, like Sharpies for the name tags. I made the mistake of answering her novel and addressing each of her concerns.
She:
- used red text
- started with “I don’t think you quite get it.”
- had four paragraphs about the decaf coffee “example” (it wasn’t an example, but even if it was, she never made her point). — She said that most people drink coffee for the aroma and not for the caffeine. She also said that the most popular way to make coffee was coffee powder. (???) She cited some kind of survey and mentioned a journal article. The short answer is that we don’t need decaf coffee for this (4-5 years old) event. Every year, they pour out the whole gallon of coffee. And no, no one is going to drink instant coffee. Still, if she wants to provide it, fine.
- rudely shat on one of my ideas (a building survey so we’ll know in the future if we need to things like decaf drinks, vegan food, events during the week, etc.)
- got on some kind of sustainability high horse even though I had encouraged her to research that and bring it to a meeting as a topic
- declined helping set up the coffee she was so adamant about
- declared that accommodating people’s preferences (preferences no one has declared they have, by the way) are “the same” as making ADA accommodations for our guests in wheel chairs — AYFKM???
- offended me, L, and a few others
All of this happened at 9pm. I was too tired to read her novel and decided to wait until morning. Big mistake. I should have read it all…and then killed the thread[2].
When I woke up, it was to a text from L that she was quitting the committee. She saw the novel in the middle of the night while caring for her elderly dog, couldn’t get back to sleep, and had to work the next day on only two hours of sleep. I can’t do this without her; we are gone too much.
Oh. Hell. No. (and over “just” a potluck!)
[2] I sent one more email that I was locking the thread because it wasn’t a good use of the email list of members’ time. I also moderated her posts; I told her it was out of hand, rude, and creating unnecessary drama.
L heard from a lot of committee members to please not quit. The building manager ended up with a copy of the novel and was like WTF? D met with me. I met with L. I made sure, through the building manager, that there is no defined process for removal of a committee member should it come to that.
J “monkeyed” with my whole afternoon/evening of last-minute trip prep. I couldn’t do several of the things I wanted because I spent my whole day dealing with her drama. (And I know it was frustrating him that this was taking up our last day of prep.)
We got one more email from her. She just manually entered addresses of committee members. She remembered some, but not all of them, which proved my point that we needed an email list.
“It is unexpected but not surprising for your response to blocking my email. I guess it is the typical way for you to handle the controversies. Also You wanted everything under your control. Just like our email group. If you want to be a good leader, this is not the way…..But I think I have been wasting my time. It is time for me to be out of this group if you are still on the lead.”
Let me be clear. I have ideas. I’ve done too many parties to not. I’ve brought every idea to the committee for discussion and approval. At no point have I laid down any kind of law or tried to “control” anything.
D, L, and I all had a quick thankful moment. L is back on board for 2025!
[1] Ironically, she wanted to help more and has copious amounts of time. Had she not been a drama monkey, she might have been able to take on some projects or something that would teach her some event management and let her learn some leadership.
Don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out, Deadline Monkey J.
Epilogue.
The next morning, we hauled our suitcases and backpacks with 94 days worth of clothes and tech into the elevator. It made a very rare stop on the way down. It was J. Of course it was. We said hi to each other. She got off on her parking level. After the doors closed, I let out a Jersey Shore, “Awkward!” and texted L at the irony.
Twenty four hours later, our hotel lobby had coffee set up for everyone: three giant urns of real coffee and then one tiny little carafe of decaf.
This is coffee for 164 rooms of guests, so about 300 people. The hotel does this every day. This is further proof of how many people don’t bother with decaf.