We have a woman at our school that makes beautiful quilts and offered to run quilting workshop as a fundraiser. She simultaneously donated a custom made quilt to our auction. Long story short, she was late for her own workshop and forgot half of the materials she said she'd supply. For the auction the person who "won" her custom quilt is still waiting for it, 2 years later! Not sure how we would have known this but she had good intentions but horrible organizational and follow through skills. All I can say is her poor kids!
I recruited volunteers left and right for the newly-formed parent group. I befriended one parent, and was regaled with stories of accomplishments.
Long story short, while this parent DOES volunteer an extraordinary amount of time, and is fairly good at it, this parent viciously gossips about every other person at the school.
Case in point: Our book fair came around, the chair had an unexpected trip, so I was asked to fill in until she returned. I had a child at home, so I limited the hours I was open for the first few days (9:30 to 3:00). People were coming up to me telling me they heard that I am not doing anything for the book fair (that I wasn't even supposed to be running), I wasn't open enough, I closed too early, parents didn't have time to browse, you name it!
I lost who I thought was a friend, I have since all but left the parent group, and I volunteer only in my child's classroom.
I told the administration I volunteered for the parent group, not drama club. I didn't play games like this in school, and I don't intend to start as an adult.
This year we had an enthusiastic parent who wanted to repaint the map of the USA on the school grounds. She set out to get donations for the project, then went totally overboard, hitting up dozens of local businesses for a project that was expected to cost $200-$300 at most. We only ask for donations once or twice a year for big events so we don't overwhelm the businesses.
While we admired her gusto, we were bewildered when she ballooned a simple painting touch-up job into something that was going to cost $800! After we scaled her back, she got the hardware store to donate all the paint and paintbrushes, which was wonderful. Everything seemed fine then, until the painting started.
She used a map printed in a child's book as her guide and what she knew of the USA. A week later we had a USA map with Alaska as an island, a Niagra falls (there are no details on this map, it's states only in different primary colors) that was the size of New York sitting somewhere up in NE Canada, colossal mountains where NW Canada would be, part of Mexiso painted in, strips of bright pink paint along the north/south borders and vast amounts of blue 'water painted along both coasts. And there was paint slops and spills all over the concrete near the map. We had to ask her to please stop painting.
When the weather is nice again, the map will need to be repainted and the problems fixed. While we appreciated her enthusiasm and willingness to volunteer, we were stunned by the painting mess left behind. It was quite disappointing to have to curtail such an eager volunteer, but we just had no choice.
We had a parent that could fundraise well and had great ideas, but her people skills and attitude are terrible. She chaired a Harvest Hoedown event at the elementary school several years ago, which was successful, until parents started calling the PTO president afterwards swearing to never ever volunteer for any event that this parent chaired again. This bad volunteer had gone on a witch hunt via phone calls looking to chew out whichever volunteer cut a pizza slice in half (because they were running low) when some friend of hers who'd come to event got angry that she didn't get a full slice for her $1.00.
Around that same time, I co-chaired the elementary Art Docent program with this same woman at the elementary school and she treated me more like her lowly personal assistant than her co-chair. The final straw for me was when she told me how much she wanted to give the art lessons in her own kids' classrooms because it was so very important to her, but that she'd 'assigned' another parent to give the lessons in my daughter's classroom and I should be pleased to do other classrooms instead. I insisted I do my own daughter's classroom and she got upset and said I it didn't matter if I didn't do my own child's classroom because it meant I was being fully 'cooperative' and 'supportive' of the program! This was just five minutes after her impassioned speech about how important it was to her personally to be the one giving the lessons in her two kids' classrooms and how it was the reason she was chairing the Art Docoent Program.
Years later, she was given another chance and stepped up to chair the book fair at the middle school after the chair had to drop out when she finally landed a job. Well, after she was condescending and rude to many of the volunteers, who then complained to that PTO board, she won't be getting any more chances.
We took in a person last year who was only a couple of years at the school from another state. The first year I had heard how her old school did something every week, i.e., Grandparents breakfast, fundraisers, etc. So the second year we thought what a great person to be the President. We unfortunately had to ask her to step aside this last January. It started with the open house ice cream social (total failure) and finally was stopped with a fundraiser that she dragged on for months and actually didn't deliver the product to a couple of parents.
The worst type of volunteer in my opinion, is one that commits to an opportunity and then doesn't show up. When you count on volunteers coming through for you this is unacceptable and a very difficult situation in which everyone suffers - the event, the coordinators, the other volunteers, etc.
