Wednesday, August 27, 2008

How 'Bout "No." Does "No" Work For You?

So the other night I was just sitting around, minding my own business and preparing to watch Jeopardy, when the phone rang. For some reason, whenever the phone rings I jump a little and turn to the phone and say “What the hell do you want?” as if I’ve just been interrupted while doing something important. I don’t know why I react that way, but I do. Anyway, turns out it’s Uber-Volunteer who has called me.

Awww crap!

Now I’m not opposed to volunteering at all. In fact, I’m all for it. And, this does give me the chance to remind everyone that while we all get caught up in the Presidential election, we need to remember that there are tons of local issues that affect our daily lives in a big way. You’re local city council, school board, county commissioners and all those Yaw-Hoos matter. So, don’t get so caught up in the Presidential election that you forget to work to stop some fuckwit from getting elected to the city council or worse, the school board.

Here in my home county they are trying to get a the “Wet/Dry” issue on the ballot. And as you probably know, I support the county going “Wet.” That means we will allow liquor sales which we don’t currently do. And, I have already signed the petition. In fact, I signed it the first day it was out there.

So, you might be surprised to find out that when Uber Volunteer called me and asked me to go out and go door to door to collect signatures to put the “Wet/Dry” issue on the ballot I said “NO.”

And you know what else. I felt good about it too. And I still do.

There are a couple of reasons why I said no. The first one is that I really hate doing things like going door to door. If we just set up a table with a jug of lemonade and some cookies to hand out to passersby and then say “Oh, and would you please sign this petition also?” I would be more than willing to do that. But, going door to door during the dinner hour? Hell no.

Besides, in reality I’m wayyyyyy to shy to do things like that too.

The other reason I said “NO” was because Uber Volunteer annoys me quite often. It’s not just that she doesn’t like butter on her popcorn either, which is totally weird. I mean, that’s almost as weird as those people who don’t like beans in their chili. It’s just wrong.

No, what annoys me about Uber Volunteer is that she is one of these people who volunteers for damn near every single freaking thing. Then, she gets all pushy and bossy and wants everything done her way only. And, worse than that, she volunteers for everything and then doesn’t have time to do all of them.

So then she calls people like me up and asks us to do what she volunteered to do. And, she always needs me to do something RIGHT NOW! There’s simply no excuse for doing this all the time. If she had called and asked me to help out next week, or even a couple of days later I probably would have said yes. But, this time I decided that I had had enough and told her I couldn’t help.

Anyway, I think I might say no more often in the future when she, or anyone else, does the same thing. I hate saying no and have never been very good at it, but I just can’t let these people take advantage of me like that. To be honest with you, I’m kind of surprised that I don’t feel guilty about saying no at all, because normally I feel really guilty when I tell people no and then I get all down and shit.

But, not this time.

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