To think this Brown Owl is plain rude?

[itchybumagain]

My DD is a Brownie and she loves it.

She's only recently done her promise, so is working towards badges.

They are doing their 'friend to animals' badge and we were told they had to bring some pet food as a donation to local charity.

BO also said if they didn't provide the food they couldn't do the badge (I think this is wrong?)

So my DD takes £2.50 worth of food today, we were first to arrive so not busy. DD hands it over, made up look on her face, BO doesn't look at either of us ticks name of list and turns her back on us.

No thank you, nothing, DD looked so let down as she chose it herself hence the £2.50!

Plus I think it's unfair to put conditions of donations for them to get the badge, what if someone can't afford it?

I've bit my tongue but itching to say something

For Colossal and every other Guider, scouter or volunteer out there:

We are not experts. We’re your next-door neighbors. We’re not perfect; we are just parents like you.

We don’t have any more spare time or energy than you do. We all work full time and juggle our families and our schedules and try to keep it all together as best we can.

The only difference between us is that we believe in what Girl Guiding has to offer. So much so, that we contribute our time, our miles, and our talents to help our girls and your girls grow in Guiding.

We complete authorization forms, budgets and registrations and fill our homes with boxes of paperwork, books and craft supplies that you will never see.

We give up time with our families to take many hours of training as well as attend various meetings so that we can meet our greatest challenge – providing a variety of programs that meet the needs, and interests, of very individual girls.

We try to involve parents who want us to understand that they don’t have the time to drive on outings or help at meetings. We rejoice at the generosity of others.

Life happens. Sometimes we find ourselves going in too many directions. We run out of steam. We have memory lapses. Communication lines break down. Time slips by. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t care.

So many evenings we spend on the phone, seeking advice and support from other leaders when disappointments or problems occur. “How do I keep my girls’ attention?” “What are your ideas for the ceremony?” “How do you work with girls in different grades?”

Our dining tables are covered with bits of rope, menus, trip permits, craft supplies, paperwork and badges for each and every girl in the unit. A couple of them won’t show up and don’t think to call and let us know. Sometimes we feel unappreciated.

Yet, these girls can fill us with pride at their determination and accomplishments. Their smiles light up a room and when they say “Thank You” it makes it all worth it.

We help these girls build relationships. Some struggle more than others. Consideration, loyalty, helpfulness, friendliness … is encouraged by the Girl Guide Promise and Law. And sometimes we too must learn these lessons over and over again with the girls. But we are willing to keep learning.

Please be patient if we appear distracted or frustrated or overwhelmed at times. Forgive us if we are not the kind of leader you would be if you had the time. Instead, provide us with encouragement or offer your help. Keep us in your thoughts and prayers.

We are, after all, only mentors…role models…leaders. Volunteers who have taken an oath to give these girls, your girls, the most precious gift we have to offer – the gift of time.

This was written by a UK Guider and sums it all up really.

It's quite simple, really.

You (OP) have something in your hand. You give it to someone else (BO). That second person (BO) should say, "Thank you." Regardless of it's final destination, BO asked for it.

I wouldn't want the abbreviation of my name to be BO.

Would it not be a thank you for completing the task that I asked of you?

Crossed post HappyAgainOneDay, I agree

So, Happyagain and Punnedout, you believe this lady (Brown Owl) actually consciously chose to be rude? Not that she might have had a momentary lapse in concentration, but that she actually went out of her way to avoid saying thank you? Really? Why do you think that?

DD hands it over, made up look on her face, BO doesn't look at either of us ticks name of list and turns her back on us.

Leaving aside all the descriptions of how hard Brown Owls work (appreciated, by the way), this seems to be the point of the thread.

A child hands a requested item to an adult in authority and the adult does not acknowledge them in any sort of socially accepted way, but instead verges on the rude. The child is hurt, the mother is surprised and a bit annoyed that the behaviour of the other adult (whom her child respects) has caused her child to be hurt. The mother comes online to vent a bit and gets lambasted.

op, I wouldn't say anything to the BO but mentally I'd be more alert to other instances of dismissive or rude behaviour from her. Just because someone is doing a laudable volunteering job doesn't give them carte blanche to be rude. We're all rude occasionally, yes, but it's not acceptable as a regular thing.

I'm sure you said something like 'Oh well, I guess BO is very busy, she spends a lot of time looking after you all' or something to your DD afterwards, right? If not then before the next meeting, I'd be tempted to say something like 'BO works very hard and sometimes it's a bit hard to remember to say please and thank you when you work very hard'. Little kids remember these incidents and sometimes worry that they did something to provoke the unfriendly behaviour, so explaining it might help.

As an aside, for all the Guiders out there who need a bit of a pick-me-up, watch

Brown Owl is fallible. This was, as far as the op knows, a one-off. She may have given every child who brought a donation a big thank you in front of the group, who knows? She is a volunteer leader, it goes without saying that the hard work she puts in cancels out a momentary lapse. You shouldn't have given this a second thought.

Remember to thank Brown Owl for everything she does for your daughter, remembering the hours of prep and planning, meetings and training that she has to do to allow her to continue volunteering at the weekly Brownies session.

Seriously I am in awe of anyone who volunteers their time and energy to do things like this..

Thankless task.

That's jolly good NigelMolesworth. It ought to go viral.

There is another point to consider in that the Brown Owls, Tawny Owls, Akelas, Skips and I can't think of other names at the moment are actually looking after your children for a regular period of time so they give you some respite.

So she's not perfect? Jesus so it's actually a thread now that someone forgot to say thank you?

Seriously?

I'm finding this thread very interesting. I attended Brownies very briefly as a child and my children are small, so I have very little personal experience of the organisation.

My question (and it's a sincere one) is this:

How rude would a Brown Owl (or Akela, Skip etc) have to be before you'd start to take umbrage? Does the nature of the voluntary job they're doing effectively excuse them from polite social behaviour?

I do have some experience of being dealt with by sour-faced angry adults as a child; I was told that I had to like the people and be grateful because they had done such-and-such for me. I tried dutifully to like them, but I couldn't. I suspect many adults felt the same.

What if a BO's unpalatable manners got to the point where children were put off going? Would it be addressed then?

I am not trying to upset anyone here; I'm posing the questions as an interested reader.

We'll the op says her dd loves going so I would suggest that this dreadful omission of a thank you that was perpetrated by brown owl is a one off wouldn't you?

If brown owl was a vicious nasty bitch constantly ignoring children and parents alike then I guess her group would have closed long ago.

So maybe she was just stressed and distracted as all normal human beings are from time to time whether heart surgeons, builders or brown owls!

I would also suggest ensuring children are brought up with a bit more of a tough skin than to be upset by this or they may find the big wide world a tad rough. And parents need to teach resilience and practise that themselves.

It was without a doubt an oversight.
I'm a cub leader and the first 10 minutes or so until we have grand howl is absolutely mental.
The kids want to tell you all about their week, they throw forms and envelopes at you, then bounce off to climb on stuff that they aren't meant to climb on, parents asking where a particular badge goes, parents telling you who is picking up who... It goes on and on!
It is stressful, because you are personally responsible for other people's children. I'm not even Akela, but I have to spend weekends learning first aid for children, and traipsing through muddy woods on night hikes. I sometimes hate it, BUT when the kids do something they never thought they could do, and say thank you. It's worth every second.
I'm a soppy cow, the first time I was handed a little homemade present I got a bit tearful! (Plastic bracelet, so small it cut off the blood to my hand, but I wore that bloody bracelet all weekend!)
It's so easy to say "give it up" but if everyone that had a tough time gave it up, there would be no pack. Volunteers are not easy to find. The kids lose out.

Plumping it's a good question.

Everyone has moments where they forget to say thank you, smile etc etc. If the Brown Owl in question is normally pretty polite, smiley and this was a momentary lapse, then that's one thing.

Ongoing rudeness, surliness is not acceptable in my eyes and should be dealt with, volunteer role or not - complaints in Guiding can be escalated to the District Commissioner. Details should be on the form parents signed when their child joined. Otherwise, speak with your feet and find another unit/set one up yourself. Certainly in my District, rude Guiders would not be tolerated as it is against Guiding principles.

I am a Rainbow Guider and long time member of the manners police and, although I try to be smiley and welcoming, I know that sometimes I fall short. In the same way, I try to give parents who are rude / unsmiling / unhelpful the benefit of the doubt.

I think. partridge that people are not really excusing the Brown Owl's rudeness. This was an isolated incident (as far as we know - the OP has vanished) and the point being made is that none of us is infallible.

This morning I let someone out into traffic and they didn't acknowledge me or wave to say thanks. But I didn't start a thread moaning about it on MN.

The second point being made is that volunteers do a hard job. The OP made various comments ("not busy") which suggest she doesn't have much understanding of what might be involved in a volunteer role.

In terms of supervision etc, if someone's behaviour was causing a problem, there are steps that would be taken to have a word and deal with it! (see fatowl's comment above)

Well yes Lepaskilf, your throw away post did hit a nerve. Do you feel all special inside knowing you have made someone on the Internet cross? So easy just to type maybe you should quit, isn't it, from your sofa or your desk at work. Easy as pie just to type the words...

I won't be quitting, but thanks for the suggestion that I should, I'll take it and all your other insightful and intelligent posts on this thread under careful consideration.

You, and all the others on this thread who think the OP is not being unreasonable, you really think this Brown Owl was intentionally rude to this child? Despite numerous posts, and my possibly lacking in punctuation rant, describing all the things that that person would have been thinking about at the start of the meeting. You don't just think that probably the most likely reason for her not saying thank you to the child was not because she was rude, but because she was thinking about something else?
I will ask my question again, and to you in particular Lepaskilf, can you hand on heart say that you never, ever, been inadvertently impolite to someone because you were distracted, you mind thinking about six other things at that moment.

I am never intentionally rude, and I have never intentionally ignored parents or children who come to give me something. But I have the insight to accept that sometimes, given my experience of running a GG unit, there is every possibility that I have done something very similar to the Brown Owl in the OP. Am I proud about that, no, of course not. What I do take objection to is the response to that event, the 'I'm going to moan about it on MN, maybe lots of other people will come and validate my moan.' How about instead a 'she seems really distracted' response just in your head, with a shrug, or a 'I wonder if there is anything I might be able to do to help her out a bit?' response. Nope, straight onto the Internet with it.

frasersmummy if you had made a similar sanctimonious 'it's the guide law' comment in a Guiders meeting I would absolutely have pulled you up on it. Not helpful, not supportive and spectacularly irritating.

How rude would a Brown Owl (or Akela, Skip etc) have to be before you'd start to take umbrage?

Far ruder than once forgetting to thank a child. I've never come across a genuinely unpleasant or rude volunteer leader, and I know dozens of them, but we all have our crap moments (I still can't tell some twins apart who I've had in one of my groups for 18 months, and it annoys them when I get it wrong, but I see them for an hour a week and I swear there is no difference ).

If a leader was generally unfriendly and unpleasant, they would simply not have members, and of course you'd be within your rights to tell them to check their attitude and bitch about them on Mumsnet.

I will concede that maybe a 'well done' or at least some sort of acknowledgment would have been good, but I think expecting her to thank you is not on!

Thanks for the replies. I think I'd call the BO's behaviour more 'soft' rudeness (i.e. not actually saying anything wrong but being slightly off-putting) than 'hard' rudeness (active unpleasantness). I certainly wouldn't leave the troop over it and would be happy if she was pleasant to me/others on the next visit. If she displayed consistent 'soft' rudeness, though, then I would be put off and probably leave. I'm sure that makes me a delicate flower but I don't think I'm especially unusual

This thread is reminding me of our guide leader who actually seemed to actively hate us. We were bloody awful though, I'm embarrassed by it now but at the time never thought about what motivated her to keep doing it or the fact she was a volunteer. Our patrol was pretty much permanently out of favour after we baked a pastry cock and gave it to the scouts out the window. Wish I could say sorry after reading this.

partypigeon

I'm astounded at the preciousness on here. BO didn't say thank you. Maybe she should have, maybe she was up to her eyes, maybe she is just rude. It is one incident, and a thread is started about it, really?

I am not perfect, I am sure I have unintentionally blanked someone, but I am damn sure that if I was giving up my time and effort to look after someone's else child every week I should be cut some slack.

OP if you that bothered about BO's perceived inadequacies withdraw your child from Brownies. An over reaction to 'thank you' not being said? Yes. But so is starting a thread about it.