No Time to Waste

Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t know anyone who has excess time to waste. With the preparations for PMD’s 15^th anniversary, several grants to write, several corporate projects to develop, and running PMD’s regular service program, I’m working 80 hours a week and not happy about it.

 

So I’m irked when meetings start (and thus end) late or I read about another Big Dig fix at “no taxpayer cost “ (that will cost precious time to many drivers due to reroutings and delays in order for the fixes to be completed).

 

While wasted time seems to be the status quo, at least PMD service projects start and end on time. We try to respect people’s limited time and their commitment to participate for an entire PMD project. Likewise, we, particularly our volunteer project managers and recipient charities, appreciate when volunteers respect our policies about timeliness. To aid volunteers with this, we ask that they arrive 5-15 minutes in advance of the advertised start time to check and settle in, and we also provide fairly detailed directions and maps with time estimates.

 

Arriving late or not at all are some of the most stressful things volunteers can do to our project managers. Assignments are incomplete. Orientation must be repeated. As a result, late people don’t enjoy volunteering as much and tend to be more critical despite their being responsible for their lateness, our volunteer project managers are unnecessarily stressed, and the on-time volunteers have to compensate.

 

Now if only I could get PMD’s board of directors to respect each other’s time and to treat their meetings like PMD projects…. Special kudos to Martha, Danielle, and Karen, who worked with me until 10 PM to complete the invitation mailing last week.