Have you thanked your volunteer today?

The months of August, September and January are always our busiest at the Women's Club. This is because of all the new expats moving here to coincide with the school schedule. Today alone I signed up six new members. I have decided that on average, I spend about 20-30 minutes with each person I sign up. Multiply this by the 40 new members that have signed up these past few months and it all adds up to a lot of talking, venting and questions on the newcomer's part and a lot of listening, sympathizing and work on my part.

I realized today that I need to try and avoid membership/customer service types of jobs in the future. This is because I am too sensitive. At least in a job, you know you are getting paid, so you can ignore some rude comments and just think of the money. But when you are volunteering, you are doing it out of the goodness of your heart, so people being rude to you can hit a little harder. This was the first e-mail I read on Monday morning:

I renewed my membership back in July. I remember being told our membership number and password would remain the same. It seems as this is not the case. I have not received any update on membership number or password. Last year it took about 6 months for me to access the Web site; I hope this is not the case this year.
Please send me my information needed.

The problem with working in membership is that when you realize that 550 members each have an address, e-mail, home phone, cell phone, membership number and Web site password, that gives you 3,300 things to mess up. You could get 95% of those things correct and you would still be messing up 165 people's information.

The majority of our members are really nice people who I enjoy seeing. But it just takes one person to say something rude that can make you wonder why you work so hard. I think many people at the club forget that we are all just volunteers and instead treat us like paid employees. Granted, this was a busier week than normal. But I was doing things at or for the Women's Club for a total of 18 hours this week. Think about it -- 18 hours of doing something you get nothing more than an occasional pat on the back for, and yet people still complain. Ironically enough, it is the people that never volunteer that are the rudest and the people that volunteer all the time that are the nicest.

Food for thought: Are you the complainer or the one that is out there volunteering and trying to make a change?