People ruin everything

I had come to the rescue wide eyed and pretty darn naïve. As I settled in over those first weeks and months, I saw volunteering as my escape from the real world of office phones, difficult people, computers, family madness, self-criticism, and the politics of everyday life. I could run away from all aspects of myself and life and just clean kennels, scoop poop and walk dogs or whatever the shift leaders needed that day. And luckily as I volunteered with many of the same people, things were pretty sweet and blissful for a few years; we were a happy balanced pack I guess you could say.

Well, you may know how this U-turn goes. Somewhere out there, whether a paid job/career or in the world of volunteerism, some people are there for other reasons. They are good at the illusion of being a strong volunteer or employee, outsiders would only see someone they had complete faith in and seem an integral part of the success of the organization. But away from the eyes and ears of the public, their true selves are quite different. There are little remarks to you or others to try to keep you in “your place”. Or these folks cannot say anything nice about anything or anyone. The type of people who use the ill gained admiration of others as a tool to dominate and manipulate. Their actual contribution to the organization may not be all it’s cracked up to be but hide this through a lot of bravado and maybe cozy behavior targeted at just the right people, so their work is never questioned. It all is becoming detrimental to the groups mission. And you.

“The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.”

―William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

So great, here you are with all these wonderful animals you love and want to help, and now you have to deal with what amounts to a bully/narcissist. Your heaven has started to fall out from under you. What should you do?

My experience was with a few folks who became increasingly ticked off that other volunteers and staff were being asked to take on more duties and roles with our organization. I had begun to reside close to the shelter and thus saw and worked with the animals almost every day. One of these volunteers told me I should not talk to adopters, since I, “didn’t know what they (the bullies) had told the potential adopters about the animal”. Wow. As if I would add something to the conversation not relevant! Or that I could not add any valuable insight given my daily consistent experience with the animals. Really? Perhaps they did not want me to counter some loose “facts” they had told the adopters in attempt to get an animal adopted quickly or didn’t want anyone stealing attention from them in the process. Years later after these folks quit, we also found out they were asking adopters for “a minimum of $100 cash donation” to help the shelter “cover costs the adoption fee did not”. Well guess what, that was not something our Board sanctioned, the shelter accountant never saw a dime of the money they collected. Of course not. And this was the nice stuff they did!

I will say there is no perfect answer or remedy. There wasn’t with these clowns. Many organizations hate to ask staff or volunteers to leave since it is so hard to find help. And if this is a mean client of a veterinary practice, well, you can’t throw out a paying customer (although that sounds sooo good sometimes!). So the solution is controlling how we respond to these bad seeds. So please don’t stop reading now!

See if these ideas may work for you to ease the burden of working side by side with horrible folks:

·  Try to distance yourself from them and any of their “flying monkeys” if possible. Any common friends (what I like to call the flying monkeys) could be playing both sides of the table and going back to the others with things you have said or done, hence the “Oz” reference! Say as little as possible to these folks, giving them nothing to delight in sharing with the troublemakers.

·   The best solution would be to stop volunteering with them at the same time or in the same area of the shelter. In a smaller organization, this may be hard since manpower is short and it would not be easy to continue to do what you want without running into them. If your situation permits, as example, if the bad guys like to do events and so do you, put your focus on the aspects of planning they shy away from so you can be surrounded with folks on a separate team who are more like you and just want to chip in and make the event a success.

·        If you cannot avoid working together, there are things you can try to deflate interactions with these types that let you take back the control of a conversation. Or at least temporarily leave them stumped how to reply! A short-term win for you may be enough to get you smiling again and off to the next task. To do this, try to inject a bit of humor into speaking with these types. They either won’t get it or will not know what to do when you don’t play along with the way they are trying to drive the conversation. An example would be my response when I was told I should never talk to adopters. I delivered the following in a way that was perhaps part Amy Schumer, part Hugh Grant (from his older movies, i.e. charmingly nervous, fumbling), “Oh you’re right I am sooo much more suited to scooping poop, I mean, poop, that is why I am here, for the poop, and I love it, scooping poop, that is really my place here, gosh that is so right, Me and my poop scooper, yep.” The look on their face was worth it! The other key here was to exit the situation immediately. I excused myself to do something else. I kept my exit sentence vague so as not to give them something else to start up with on me, “excuse me now, I have something I need to do elsewhere”. Exit stage right!

·        Here is another approach to confuse them. Most bullies cannot process both seeing you as a target and enjoying praise you give them at the same time. Example, they say something critical or nasty to you, and you reply something like this, “Oh, those are definitely words to hear” (this sentence may confuse them and make them wonder if you are arguing or not, let’s face it, the sentence is kind of odd, but that is the point), then you immediately give them a compliment (“your hair always looks good/that hair color looks great”, “I love those glasses”), thus feeding them the praise they desire and feel they deserve. The combination of the two may confuse them how to respond. NOTE: Try not to compliment anything they are doing related to the shelter, or you may feed their notion they are the better volunteer/employee.

There is so much more to this topic, and I would love to hear your stories and what you have done or tried, successfully or not and what you would like to explore more within the group. Please email or comment so things can get pulled together for future discussions.

Till next time,

From one Heart to another,

~Sandra