May 24, 2019
Dear Everyone:
Last February, I attended a “Spring Seminar” held by the
Golden Gate
Chapter of ARMA International.
At one point, the current President, “Colin”, gave a pep speech
about how great it is to be involved in ARMA and wouldn’t anyone like to
consider joining the Board of Directors.
That’s when I realized that May is the “traditional” month for
holding Chapter elections.
So I sent a reminder to the Board of my own
Chapter that we would have
to hold an election of some sort in May.
The silence was deafening.
Until the middle of last month when “Veronica”, our President for
the past two years, suddenly sent out an email that we needed to get
started on that.
I threw together a “Nominations Form” and posted it to our website.
“Veronica” sent an email to all Chapter members, with a link to
the form that they could print, fill out and send back to us, should
anyone be interested.
Well, gosh darn! Somebody
actually did fill out an application form and sent it to the Chapter
email address. And who would
that be? None other than my
old nemesis, “Clancy”. This
character has been a particular thorn in my side for about five years
now, although we’ve known him going back much further.
When I was thrown into the role of Chapter President, “Clancy” was full
of “helpful” tips that generally boiled down into, “You should be
bullying all the Chapter members into doing whatever you want them to do
just because you’re the President.”
And “Why don’t you march into people’s offices, jump up and down
on their desks and demand that they justify not coming to the monthly
meetings!”
Suffice to say that “Clancy” and I didn’t get along too well.
A few years ago, “Clancy” became the
Pacific Region Manager, which put
him in charge of all the Chapters in Arizona, California, Hawaii, Nevada
and Utah. That gave him more
to do than bug me. But now
it looks like his term is coming to an end and he’s decided to get more
involved in his local chapter, which happens to be ours.
“Clancy” has nominated himself for the position of Vice President.
Last night, “Veronica” led a meeting of the current Board to decide what
to do next. One thing is
certain: None of us plan to
be on the new Board beginning on July 1st.
So does that leave “Clancy” as the only Board member?
No. ARMA International has
rules and one of them is that one person cannot be President
and Vice President
and Secretary
and Treasurer all in one.
That’s probably for the best.
“Veronica” sent “Clancy” an email explaining the situation.
His first response was to lecture her about how she should be
dangling a “carrot” in front of all the Chapter members that they could
have the opportunity to go to
Tempe, Arizona, for the annual Leadership
Conference. He even offered
to help her draft the email to send out to everyone.
No aspersions on Tempe, but can you seriously see anybody leaping at
that?
If that enticement fails, “Clancy” will have to stage an “Intervention”
to poll the Chapter members to ask if they really, really want the
Chapter to become “Dormant”?
Of course, we did just that a couple of years ago and plenty of people
answered that they did, indeed, want the Chapter to stay active; but
that they would not personally do anything to help keep it that way.
Which is how we ended up with our current Board of five people willing
to at least give it a try.
Now, after two years, the Chapter is once again on Life Support for now.
Last night we agreed that if the only thing holding the Chapter
together was the five of us, what was the point?
Today there has been a positive flurry of email notes flying around
about when to have a Conference Call next week with “Clancy” to decide
something or other. One
thing is absolutely certain:
I will NOT volunteer to do anything.
30-plus years is enough.
In other news…
My new car, Agamemnon, is so clever.
Each car comes with two Smart Entry Remote Transmitters, labeled
“Driver 1” and “Driver 2”. I
can program the driver’s seat to move to exactly the best location for
me, including positioning the side view mirrors.
There’s just one little problem.
When I arrive at the car door, with “Driver 1” in my pocket,
Agamemnon helpfully moves the driver’s seat forward as soon as I open
the door. Unfortunately, I
then have to move the seat back far enough to allow me to get into the
car comfortably.
So I lied to Agamemnon. I
told him the “Driver 1” is a very tall basketball player who likes the
seat as far back as possible, including reclining the back of the seat a
bit. So when I open the
door, Aggie shifts the seat as far back as possible.
In the meantime, “Driver 2” is a
Munchkin who likes the seat back
upright and the whole seat moved almost as far forward as possible.
Once it the car, I just press the “Driver 2” button on the door
and presto! I’m in a very
comfortable position to actually drive the car.
The technical term for this is:
How to Outfox User Friendly.
Love, as always,
Pete
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