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On Volunteerism
THINKING ALLOWED
Essays on Issues, Ideas and Reflections on the Times. Published now and then. Opinions pro or con are welcome.
ON VOLUNTEERISM
I think that all bosses believe that people who work for them should do more. Doing more means that that the worker shows capacity for more work so more work is sent his way. One of my Principals told me so in response to my pointing out that there were teachers who did nothing but teach. He said that he gave me jobs because he knew I would get them done. This is nothing but sophistry and escape from managerial responsibility. What he is saying is that HE is too lazy to find ways to light fires under the slothful members of his staff.
Mr. Bush, our current President, is pushing “volunteerism”. I do not exactly know what he means by this. I suspect that he means that those people, who do a lot of work, are happy in their work and glad to be of service to other people will be sought out and given more work to do. I know a lot of people, workers and their bosses, who do the minimum required of them to keep them free from criticism who turn to others who like to work and say – “let (you supply the name) him/her do it.”
Mr. Bush is surrounded by a lot of volunteers. I don’t think these are the people he is talking about. At some point they are substantially rewarded. What he is talking about is having a lot of people – that is a whole lot of you and me’s – do a whole lot of work FOR FREE! This is a popular idea among the managerial classes. They spend a lot of their time thinking of ways to get the work done with fewer workers at less cost. At the same time there seems to be an impulse to provide fewer workers with more bosses and rewarding those bosses with bonuses at the end of the year.
I have always said that I would rather wear out than rust out. I am, like my mother before me, characterized by always doing something. This is also a hallmark of the way Carol attacks life. She lives it fully and, unlike the whiner, complainer and slacker who avoid responsibility - takes on jobs and gets them done. I am the one who gets the jobs but has no clue as to how to keep them from being reassigned after getting them done.
Carol’s Evaluation: 10 out of 10.
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