I’ve written earlier about how I have flown so little this year that I’m seriously considering going “inactive” in the club? Well, on top of that, I’ve been Secretary for the club for most of the time I’ve been a member – I think it started soon after I created a web site for the club on my own. I suck at it. I’m not organized enough, and I don’t like doing it. I got free of it once, but the person who took it on quit after a year or two and dumped it back on me.
And the club communications are now totally dysfunctional. There is a “officers” mailing list for officers and board members to communicate, but the current president of the club, and a couple of others, totally refuse to use it. Instead, they send email to long lists of CCs, which means that you personally have no control over what email address you receive the message, or in what format. It also means that sometimes you find out that a conversation is going on because sometime in the middle of it somebody stops hitting “Reply All” and uses their own address list. One extremely annoying example of this happened when the club officers and BOD were discussing selling the Lance (which I knew about) but didn’t include me in most of a long thread about some of the details in spite of the fact that I was one of three members of the club who used the Lance, I was one of two officers who used the Lance, and the detail they were discussing had to do with on-line advertising. Anyway, the President last year said “I can see why people would want the email list, but I’ll continue to use my own list”, and subscribed. But sometime between then and now he’s unsubscribed again (which I didn’t know). Meanwhile, he’s stubbornly using his alias list (which includes people who haven’t been officers in 4 or 5 years and who don’t live in the US any more), and I’m stubbornly using the mailing list.
So last night (it’s now 3:30am and I haven’t been able to sleep all night because I’m so riled up about this) he sent me an email basically saying “communicate with me my way, or we’ll replace you as secretary”, and talking about how he didn’t want to be president but it was thrust upon him because nobody else would take it. I responded with an ecstatic “YES, PLEASE DO” and explained how I didn’t want to be secretary, have had it thrust upon me twice, and have been doing it for about 10 years total of my 15 years in the club.
I guess I’ll have to wait to see if I’ve called his bluff or whether I’m really going to be free of this horrible task. Maybe I’ll spend some time converting the club web site to Joomla so I can hand off more of that to others in the club.
