To wonder how volunteers cope with parents' stupidity?

[MeghanThyStallion]

My DC are involved in various clubs so I'm on a few WhatsApp groups used by the volunteer leaders to coordinate with parents. My goodness, but I roll my eyes so often. Some examples since Christmas:

• Trainer: "Happy New Year everyone! Don't forget we're back on Wednesday, 5pm at local leisure centre." The next few messages, all from parents: "When are we back?" "Is it usual time?" "Are we still at local school?"

• Coach: "Home game this Saturday vs Man U, meet at 10 for a 10.30 kick-off." Parents: "Is there a match this weekend?" "What time?" and my personal favourite, the parent who text in at 10.45 on match day to say their DC couldn't play because they were injured

And so on and so forth, every siglngle week. FML but I would have lost it by now. "Well, numb-nuts, if you bloody read the message I JUST sent you, you'd know the answer to that question!"

How do they do it?!

@ClaryFairchild the England men's football team under Graham Taylor seemed to have the same philosophy, judging by some of the players selected.

I would say, at best, about half the parents tell us if their child isn't coming to practice. Am OK with that. It's last minute pulling out of matches or when I specifically ask because we are struggling with venues or coaches that I get annoyed.

I work in a school and parents never read anything - well 95% of them don’t anyway!

We moan about it to each other and hope that kid moves on quickly. It’s the arsey ones that are worse. Dapey ones are easier to roll your eyes at and forget. Last week a Mum messaged me demanding to know when her little darling was getting her badge she had done so much extra work for. That would be the badge I’d presented to her daughter two days previously. She then said she’d send the work for the next badge the following day. I’m still waiting… I do often feel like reminding parents like that I’m a volunteer and as such can leave whenever I like then there would be no club. I do make it clear in the initial letter now that we are volunteers and also have jobs or go to school and we are doing this in our spare time for no pay.

I'm a volunteer. I just find the original message with the correct details and forward it back into the chat.

Yes!!!
we have one mum who is always asking “when do the kids go back” during the holiday. She can’t just look it up on the website like the rest of us do can she?

I've been a volunteer & the sheer rudeness & entitlement of some parents is jaw-dropping. One even told me I should do more running around after his child who always left his clothes scattered to earn the subs. I politely pointed out that I didn't get paid but he refused to believe me.

I work in a school & it's the same with many parents there. They constantly ask about the, outing, club, activity they've just been emailed about. Many claim they haven't received the email but don't realise that the system shows when they are delivered, opened & read by each recipient.

Same here; we wonder why we bother

I once saw a referee hand his whistle over to a shouty dad and walk off the pitch. Shouty dad was out of puff by the end of the match 😂

@Kanaloa

It isn’t a non negotiable to win, that would be utterly ridiculous. It is an ethos. Some teams play to at least try to win. Some teams play and they honestly don’t care if they win or lose. It depends on how competitive the team is and also at what level they are playing at. There will be different tiers of football depending on the child’s ability.

My youngest son is in a team whereby they don’t care if they win or lose. It suits him perfectly as technically he’s not the best player, and he really isn’t very competitive. My eldest wouldn’t thrive in a team like that. He is very competitive and wants to win. It’s child dependent really, but I think as a coach you need to set the ethos early on. That way everyone knows the sort of team that’s it’s going to be.

He also doesn’t take on players with massive egos either as it generally is not good for the team dynamics.

He’s honest in his reviews and doesn’t accept “bad behaviour”. For example, name calling, losing ungraciously on the pitch etc etc.

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g

Yes that’s it basically. You need to set your vision/ethos from the offset as to avoid upsetting people and kids really. My youngest sons team genuinely does not care if they win or lose, I mean it’s nice if they do win but its not the primary goal. Suits my youngest down to the ground but my oldest son would be bored and unmotivated in such a team. My husband left school and went straight into coaching so he didn’t need to live his dream through our son, he was already living it himself. I guess for him it was only natural he was going to lead a team that was going to be competitive. My oldest son is very much like him too sports wise so it’s worked out well.
My youngest is much more like me 😁 and generally doesn’t care if he loses, for him it’s just a bit of a laugh and a kick about with his mates.

I’m just really impressed your kids are playing in the premier league!😂

@eastegg

That is very rude but it says more about you to be honest. My husband also coaches disadvantaged children in our city as part of the charity affiliation of our city’s football club. He also runs well-being sessions for them via sporting programmes. He regularly seeks out teams for certain players in our community as parents actually go to him for advice on where their son would be a good fit etc. Setting out a clear ethos and managing parents expectations is a bit of a skill to be honest, and also a very thankless task but he doesn’t mind he enjoys it. It’s the ones who want the kudos that seem to get bored and frustrated real quick. You do have to have a thick skin as your comment has just shown.

I work in a primary school and confirm that it’s not just the attitude towards volunteer leaders but the attitude of some parents all of the time. Love working with children, but not don’t love dealing with their adults!

I think my tesponse each time would be RTFM 🙄

Steady on. My comment was directed at the OP. It’s normally best to assume, if a post doesn’t quote or tag another, that it’s responding to the OP. There’s no reason to think that people post replies to the post directly above theirs.

It was a joke based on the fact one of OP’s examples was a match against ‘Man U’.

The first time I read your posts was when I went back after you’d laid into me. Had no idea what you were on about as my post was absolutely nothing to do with yours.

Every single time, it drives me crazy !

@eastegg

In that case, I apologise.

I run a school WhatsApp thing. It amazing how many people will send message after message of nonsense, completely forgetting that there is nearly two hundred other people in the group who couldn't give a shiny shit.

Then of course people complain to me about it.

I just call the spammers out on it in a artificially nice way. The people who know me know I'm
Not nice - they think it's hilarious. Glad someone is enjoying it

I've also started proactively posting every school letter in the class chat. It's a pretty quiet chat, possibly because the answer to every dumb question is on there already

Yes, my start-of-term email makes it clear that we are volunteers with full-time jobs and kids of our own. I also list ways that parents can help things to run smoothly (paying subs on time, reading emails, filling in forms carefully and accurately so we have the information we need if their child has an accident/is taken ill). Things seem to have improved a bit since I started doing that.

Once every year when I've finalised the accounts, I send a summary to the parents that shows what income we got from subs and how much we've spent on rent, on the membership fee, on equipment, etc. I usually do it per head as that's how we pay rent. So I'll say you pay £x a year in subs for your child and this is how we spend it. It's often an eye-opener for the parents with how little we actually have to spend on their badges, crafts, and other activities.

I used to volunteer with a local group. There was 4 of us and we would take it in turns to organise an activity.

When it was my turn the weather had turned lovely and warm so after a number of rainy weeks I organised an outdoor activity at a local country park. Message on email and WhatsApp was as follows:
"Next Monday at 5pm, (club) will NOT be at the Hall, please instead meet in the car park of (local country park). The children will need £5 to use in the cafe if they wish, and please bring a jumper incase the weather turns chilly. We will be doing lots of team games so trainers on feet. We will leave the car park at 5.10pm so please be on time as signal can be bad in main woods/park area".

Pretty easy to follow right?

Wrong.
Queue "do they need wellies?" "What time?' "Meeting in the hall will there be transport?" "Is there a charge for the park as I've already paid subs for this term?"
And so on.

On the night, 3 kids didn't show up. We stayed in the car park until 5.15pm.
I then got angry messages from their parents that little x and y and z were so upset as we didn't show up and if it was cancelled we should have said. I pointed out we made it clear we would leave the car park at 5.10pm and had actually stayed an extra 5 minutes then we had gone into the woods and signal is terrible there. I said I couldn't be responsible for their lateness as they had had the details by email and WhatsApp and everyone else managed to be there. It also later transpired one of them had actually gone to the hall, not the park.

I then got called to a disciplinary meeting by the head of all the local groups. A complaint had been made of my excluding children from an activity and I had not taken responsibility for the upset caused apparently.

I quit on the spot. As I said in my resignation for the record, it is not my responsibility to baby the parents, I was there to oversee activities with their children who in a few cases could follow instructions better than their parents.

I miss volunteering but it was the last straw. Before that we did an activity making biscuits and cakes and had asked 3 times for any allergies to anything we were using. Kid has allergy on night. Parent apparently forgot to tell us. Couldn't even explain why it wasn't on their forms from when they joined. Some people really do lack braincells.