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Choral Potpourri: Crabbiness

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    “No one understands us crabby people!” Lucy Van Pelt (Peanuts)
 
My Choral Ethics series will continue in January. In the meantime, we will explore our December experiences as choral conductors and directors. Last week, we spoke of children and this week it is all about us; the crabby us!
 
Most of us are over scheduled and under rested so it’s no wonder many are crabby. We’ve been planning for many months, if not years, for December of 2015’s concerts, Advent services and holiday events. It should be smooth sailing right about now, shouldn’t it? And yet, most of the time it isn’t and that’s why we’re crabby and stressed.
 
Marta* takes her middle school choruses to carol at their local Mall every year. She has a system and it works. Or it did. The Wednesday after Thanksgiving, they all pile in district school buses which were reserved last year. The kids know what to wear (white top, black bottom) and the chaperones are trained at the music parent meeting in September. The Mall has a keyboard (usually from the Mall’s piano store) waiting for them so she doesn’t have to bring hers. The schedule of Carolers is posted several places so everyone knows who is singing, where. 
 
As you can guess, nothing happened the way it was supposed to this year. One of the two school buses was not available and she was informed the day before. Marta called her music parents group and they put together car pools for the Mall. When they arrived at the Mall, half of her singers were wearing school sweatshirts for an athletic event after school and had left their concert clothes at school. Nothing she could do about that. The carpooling parents were not the chaperon parents and there were miscommunications about what was expected and hard feelings between the two groups. In addition, the Mall didn’t have a keyboard for her and forgot to tell her in time to bring one. Of course, there was no posted schedule of carolers and for the first time, she hadn’t been informed as to where they would be singing. They did, eventually, figure where they were supposed to sing. Her students sang like angels, even without a keyboard. They drew a crowd without the printed schedule and she was told by the Mall people it was the best caroling the group had ever done. The two parent factions pulled together and all seemed good between them. When Marta got home that night, she had a good cry and a glass of wine. When she contacted me for a Choral Ethics opinion, I told her she had a right to be crabby but wasn’t destructively crabby, so she was fine.
 
I am crabby this year. That’s right; Ms. Choral Ethics is crabby and snapping at people. My spouse called me out last week and he is right, I am crabby. After thinking about it, I am not crabby just because I am crabby; I am crabby for several good reasons. In my professional capacity, a number of my volunteers bailed out. I had to pick up the slack so our holiday programs were able to go on as always. In a volunteer position, the professionals had me take over for them because I am so competent and capable and [fill in the complimentary word]. They expected me to do their job as well as the job I volunteered for but didn’t think to tell me until after the fact. I stepped up because I didn’t want this event to fail. I snapped at the perfunctory “thanks yous” because it didn’t feel like a real “thank you,” it felt like a “thank goodness it worked out even tho we didn’t help you”-type thank you. I was ticked.
 
I don’t like to be crabby and have thought about how I can prevent my “Inner Lucy” from coming out again. There is nothing I can do about my own volunteers—the Buck stops with me after all—but I can think twice about volunteering again for that organization during this time of year.
 
We all deserve a Hot Toddy and a nap. Perhaps not right now, but soon!
 
*Name Withheld

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Comments

  1. Guilt is a tool to be used with my own group but I can’t with my volunteer position. That’s what we get for being organzied and competent….and a little part of us dies a bit every time we have to suck it up and cover for someone else. You bet I’m not gonna do it again!

  4. It is interesting to learn how unorganized some of the leaders are at the malls, events, and community organizations where we perform.  I once arrived at a hospital charity event with four students and a van load of equipment, only to be told by the policeman at the gate that absolutely no cars were allowed in.  The organizer had forgotten to tell the officer that I was on the “approved-for-entry” list, so we had to park 1/4 mile away, hike back and search the grounds to find the organizer. 
     
    Another time, I had made arrangements with an event director to come in early and set up on the outdoor, portable stage so my student band could play first, with everything well organized.  After setting up, I left to pick up some of my students who didn’t have transportation.  When we got back half an hour later, all of our stuff was piled up on the pavement, and a rock-n-roll band was setting up!  This happened because the emcee thought he was in charge of everything related to the stage and could overrule the event director.
     
    As a result of these and other snafus, I have an uneasy feeling every time I agree to one of these performances in the community.  I only agree if I can talk directly to the organizer, AND any and all other people that he or she delegates responsibility to.  I always specify what I need, and ask and double-ask who’s in charge of what, etc etc……and STILL problems arise from time to time!

  5. There is a delightful little lavender, glittery magnet on the fridge at the school where I teach, asking:
    “Who sprinkled you with grumpy dust?”
    Gentle reminder:  Not all people named Lucy are crabby. (Smile.). But just give us a little time…. (Teehee)

  6. Marie – You’re right; we all get crabby.  Even the nicest among us gets a snarl on when things that should happen don’t; when all your planning seems for naught; when people who are supposed to be THERE are somewhere else.  And you know what?  As unpleasant as it seems to us to be crabby (usually, after the fact), on occasion, we’re entitled.  Yes; that much overused word actually is appropriate in instances such as your second situation.  But more on that later on.
     
    Ten years ago, I became the director for one of Ft. Belvoir’s choirs and, de facto if not de jure, the overall parish music coordinator (I won’t say minister of music or director of liturgy, because that ain’t so).  When I did that, first as a volunteer for five months (until I realized that neither pastor nor parish coordinator had really listened when I said that I would do it only to cover the interim period between the departure of my predecessor and the hiring of her replacement – and thus, they weren’t looking for ANY replacement under the rubric “A bird in the hand,…”  yada, yada, yada) and then taking the contract in mid-April 2005, I was told that it was my “job” to coordiniate the cantors (song leaders, for those of you who aren’t Roman Catholic and are wondering if this is a Jewish service).  Being a good boy, accustomed to taking my leaders’ words at their word, I did so, driving myself nuts on a weekly basis making sure that cantors were in place, music was chosen, etc., etc., etc.  But I wondered:  If I were a contracted employee, and this was an element of my “job,” shouldn’t I be being paid for it?  (For those who aren’t aware of how Army contracting works, if you hold a non-personnel service contract, you get paid according to a schedule of line item numbers – the specific elements of your job that you’re to accomplish – and “coordinating cantors” wasn’t one of them.)  So a couple of years ago I looked at my contract – hard.  Nada; nothing; rien.  The only reference to “cantor” was my own if I served as one for a service or Mass.  Hmmm.  Grounds for crabbiness?  Possibly; however, by then I had a fairly good system in place.  Oh, I still spend upwards of 2-3 hours quarterly typing up a listing of recommended song choices for the various Masses (three a weekend) and special liturgies that happen, and still monitor what’s happening – but from a distance.  For one of the Masses, the two cantors are self-motivated and have been taking care of business from the start.  For another, the organist at that Mass has “found” people (who sometimes find themselves) to be cantors, and he has taken this as one of his personal tasks.  For the last, in the last several years there has been a very active musician who has taken it on himself to find singers to step up to the plate, and generally it works pretty well.  There’s a system in place, and it works like I prefer to have my involvement work – at a distance, ready with assistance when and if needed.  Am I still unhappy about not being paid for this being my “job,” supposedly?  Well, my wallet’s unhappy; but it is what it is.  In the hierarchy of gripes, is this a big one?  I suppose not, but it is not atypical of what we all confront in our jobs – the unexpected and frequently highly exceptionable expectation that somehow something that a leader or an individual should be doing for themselves is suddenly “our job.”  It’s grounds for justifiable crankiness.  But I do keep the fact that “it AIN’T my job” in the back pocket, so that when things go thoroughly awry, and someone comes pointing the finger at me, I can say, with a perfectly straight face, “You’re wrong; it’s not my JOB; it’s something I’ve been stuck with.  I’ll try to fix it; but if it ain’t fixed by Saturday/Sunday/whenever, you’ll just have to deal.”  And if I’m further challenged about it “being my job,” I’ll say:  “If so, so pay me.”  That will end the discussion right there, I’m sure. 
     
    Which brings me to your complaint about your volunteers and your “pros” who left you with the short stick, Marie.  You are really entitled to lower the boom on them, but in different ways, and I know you know that.  For the volunteers, you just lay the guilt trip on them.  All too often, “volunteering” for our volunteers means “when I have the time and when there’s nothing else going on.”  Baloney.  Volunteering is a commitment; if they’re over-committed, they need to be reminded that there are other people counting on them, and their failure to show impacts considerably on everyone else’s performance, regardless of all others’ best efforts – and so re-prioritizing their lives, while their business, may be necessary for a better sense of what you can and cannot do in your professional capacity and in your volunteer’s voluntary capacity.  As for the professionals, I think that perhaps a “come-to-Jesus” moment may be in order.  We both know it doesn’t work to get nasty; but a plain statement of, “This will not happen again” – without a serious discussion about what that means for YOU, but what THEY have to do about it, may be most profitable.  If you get the sense that it goes in one ear and out both, you need to stop being a volunteer there.  They WILL take advantage of you again.  All the compliments in the world are useless when, despite matters going well in spite of others’ indifference, you’re doing so with little or no pleasure, and are grinding your teeth down to nubs.
     
    In the end, what we tend to confront most often is not intentional evil, but something far worse:  indifference.  To me, it’s the missing Eighth Deadly Sin, and the root of the other Seven.  It is the consequence of an over-scheduled under-time-available society; of people thinking, “Oh, someone else will do it,” and people like us “picking up the slack.”  Well, wonder what would happen if the slack remained?  What would your “pros” have done if you hadn’t, taking the attitude of your volunteers?  They need to know the value and worth of a truly dedicated volunteer, and to realize that the buck, as you put it yourself in reference to the volunteers, stops with them, the professional.  Why not with them?  Because they don’t care enough, they are too indifferent to the consequences of their indifference.  You’re right to be ticked; you are not right to “stew in your own juices,” if that’s the case.  Drain the juices, and share the rotten meat that caused them.  And then stick it into their hands (smilingly!) and say, “all yours.”

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