This is a “just venting” post… I’m mostly just writing it so I can stop angrily stomping around my house and get to sleep. And for your entertainment value, although I’m sure we all have similar stories!
At the beginning of the year, we had a catalog fundraiser. Everything was delivered in time for parents to pick it up at the beginning of November, when we had teacher workdays. Many people did pick their stuff up, although there were a few we had to track down for weeks. There were also a handful of orders that came in to the school office with no seller name, no phone number, and no contact information for the people to whom the seller sold. Many schoolwide emails and fliers and investigative work and weeks later, we had everything distributed but two “nameless” orders.
So yesterday, almost 4 MONTHS after the orders were delivered, I get a belligerent email from a parent, demanding that I immediately contact her about why she never got her fundraiser, and spouting off about how unprofessional we are. I promptly responded to the email, explained how and when the orders had been delivered, and told her I needed to put her in touch with the fundraising person, because I wasn’t sure if we had any orders left. (Mostly because we had discussed giving up on ever finding out who ordered the stuff and using it as door prizes at a school event or something.) I was nice—the principal (whom I copied) even emailed me and said I had shown remarkable restraint.
Of course, it turns out that she was one of the “nameless” orders. And, even though we specifically said “no cash,” she turned in cash and turned in $9.00 over the order amount, because she didn’t have change! So the fundraising person tells her she has the change, and the order, and she will leave it at school for her to pick up.
This woman has not specifically responded to that email yet, but she did take the time to email me again to tell me how unprofessional and uncoordinated we were, and, by the way, this all makes her wonder (here’s the best thing) “where is my tax money going?” She left out the part where she expresses disappointment in our lack of clairvoyance for not being able to figure out who the order belonged to, but you know she was thinking it!
In my response to that, although sorely tempted, I didn’t address her question on her tax dollars. I just figured she would be glad to know that both the fundraising person and I (the President) have reached our term limits and wouldn’t be able to do the same jobs next year. But she was writing just in time to throw her name in to the nominating committee, so I’d be looking forward to seeing her at the next meeting so she could let us know which position she wanted to take on. Gee, why do I think I won’t see her there???
I can't wait until the owner of the last remaining nameless order surfaces.
