Keeping in Check

Being the person in charge of something involving the trust of others is never an easy role.  For the better part of the last six months I have been keeping the registration records for an upcoming charity event.  It is my first time in this particular job but I’ve worked on these types of projects since I was in high school and that is more years ago than I’d care to admit.  My personality leads itself to the minutia of administrative duties and I revel in the charms of Excel spreadsheets. I developed a spreadsheet for my event to include all the pertinent information for each invitee including a little bit about each one, their contact information and notes recording each time I either attempted to reach them or heard from them.

The initial invitations to our event were mailed out in April to all previous participants, some by email when I had the address while the others were sent by the US Postal system.  And while, I was a little nervous about my invites ending up in SPAM boxes, I was pretty confident the US Mail wouldn’t let me down.

As I became aware of new possible participants, they too were added to my list and invited in whatever way possible, via email, Facebook, Etsy, or snail mail.  From the point that invitations were offered, I occasionally  followed up if I had an email address because it was expedient and I have also assumed the cost of all paper, ink and stamps.

To my delight, my sheet grew from about thirty names to over one hundred and thirty, all documented as to when they were invited, where my committee first met them and if and when they responded.  Because of this attention to detail, my event was filled in short order and I have continued to add names to both my waiting list and mailing list for next year.  I was feeling pretty good about my efforts until yesterday afternoon.

I received a call from someone wanting to participate.  Their group had been long time participants in our event and an invitation had been sent through the mail in April since the only contact information I had was a street address.   I checked my spreadsheet and confirmed the mailing address and date the invite was sent but I’d received no response.

I offered to place them on the waiting list because with a finite number of spaces, that was all I could do. Not liking my answer, I was subjected to a long tirade claiming they were the injured party due to my lack of organization. Before I could get another word in, the line went dead leaving my in the  uncomfortable funk that I have been trying to exorcise for the past twenty-four hours.

I’ve told myself over and again that the reason I received the blunt end of this abuse was because this person felt that their group had been let down by their failure to act in a more timely manner.   I can understand that.  If the roles had been reversed, I know I would have felt terrible but I hope I wouldn’t have unleashed that frustration on someone else.  And if I had, I hope I would have regained my senses quickly enough to stop and apologize.

In a few days I’m certain the sting of this experience will fade but I hope the memory of it will keep me in check if the feeling of “giving someone a piece of my mind” begins to overtake me.  I wouldn’t want to leave anyone feeling the way I do today.