This will surely get me fired....

The poll on "what do you want me to blog about" isn't closed yet, but I see that three of you are curious about my job. I am the executive director for a local nonprofit. Lucky me. Actually 95% of the time I absolutely LOVE my job. Then the other 5%.....

I have mentioned, in the past, that there are some crazy ass people that live in North Idaho. One of them in particular is (actually was until this morning) a volunteer at my organization. This individual will remain unamed, however I cannot resist the opportunity to share with you what happened.

As a quick disclaimer, 99.9% of my volunteers are amazing, wonderful, generous and kind. They do so much for this organization on their own time and essentially keep us afloat. Nonprofits would never survive without volunteers, that's a fact. Unfortunately sometimes there are volunteers that you have to fire. Which is what I did today.

I have this "person" who for quite some time hasn't liked many things I have done, mostly because they are used to "how things used to be". I absolutely cannot stand the "that's not how we did it in the past" mentality because that, my friends, prevents forward progress. But I digress....

In their infinite wisdom this person has been working "behind the scenes" sending damaging emails to a select group of our other volunteers (anyone else feel like they are in junior high besides me??), attacking me as a person, questioning my integrity, and insinuating that I am not doing my job.

But the absolutely BEST part of this whole situation is that this volunteer left a GIANT PILE of emails that they printed documenting the aforementioned attacks. SMART. I found this little pile of gold upstairs when preparing for another meeting. Quite funny because they have been sitting there for a week and a half.

Call me crazy, but if you knew you left a damaging pile of documentable insults and highly inappropriate activities, wouldn't you AT LEAST try to retrieve it? DUH!

Okay, that will potentially get me fired, but this part SURELY will:

An excerpt from one of the printed emails I found:

"Of course Amy won't be there because of the fall out. She is good at using a sick kid and her husband's job as excuses. His month end closing seems to fall at all times of the month depending on when Amy needs an excuse. See you at 4."

Okay, first of all the email print out is dated Sept. 4. For those of you in finance (and you know who you are!) month end is ALWAYS at the beginning of the month following close.

Secondly, we are all aware of the situation with Mr. Sinky Pants so clearly I didn't "use" a sick kid as an "excuse". I actually attended this meeting mentioned above, where she brought all her photocopied emails, notes and conspiracy theories, no doubt with a plan to expose me as a fraud!

Then she left them behind! Is she a politician???? Boy she should be!

One final disclaimer, I would never normally write about a volunteer in a negative way. Volunteers are literally the heart and soul of our community, and my organization. They contribute their time, talents and expertise in ways you cannot imagine.

However, as has been established in the past, blogging is cheap therapy for me so I had to do this. I had to share what I am coming to think of as one of the worst experiences of my career to date (having to fire a volunteer with witnesses present isn't the top of my list of favorite things to do) but at the same time serves to reinforce the notion that without a sense of humor, in this life, we would all be lost.

Keep reading, keep sharing, and most of all, keep laughing.