I promise this isn’t going to turn into the Project: Life Change blog, but there was another major change I made that I wanted to chronicle. I think there are an awful lot of mommies who are dealing with the same sort of thing, so I think this fairly important.

Last year, a good friend of mine talked to me about how great Girl Scouts has been for her 12 year old daughter. It sounded like an awesome thing for my daughter to do, so I signed her up. I already knew our area was really short for leaders and co-leaders, so I offered to be a co-leader. I knew with as much as I work that I wouldn’t be able to handle the leader position, so I thought co-leader would be perfect.

We were assigned to a new troop with a very nice leader. We had another co-leader who has apparently been friends with the leader for a while. While I really liked the leader, the co-leader was very cool to me from the start. After a couple of meetings, the co-leader- we’ll call her "Jamie"- started being outright rude to me pretty much any time I’d open my mouth. And not just when it was just us adults, it was in front of the girls as well.

The normal me would have snapped back at her anytime she was snotty to me, but I was trying to be very adult about the situation, so I intended to ask her before or after the next meeting if there was some problem with me. She wasn’t at the next meeting, so I asked the leader- we’ll call her "Ann"- if Jamie had some reason she didn’t like me. Ann told me that Jamie was upset because the last two meetings I had needed to leave as soon as the meeting was over, leaving them to clean up by themselves.

Well, I could sort of see her point except I had been leaving because I needed to pick up my oldest son from his band practices, and also if there was a problem with that, she could have talked to me about it instead of being passive aggressive and just being rude. I assured Ann that for the next several meetings I would be able to stay later and help clean up, and she told me everything would be fine with Jamie.

Except, it wasn’t. I shaved my head in solidarity with a friend who had cancer, and the meeting before I did that, I explained it to the girls what I was about to do, and why. After the meeting was over, she pulled me aside and told me I didn’t have to do that. I told her I knew I didn’t have to do that, I wanted to do that for my friend. She told me she was on her third time of having breast cancer, and she didn’t lose her hair during her chemotherapy except once. I said it was too late, my friend had already shaved her head, and I was going to as well. She rolled her eyes and huffed at me, and that was that.

Her snottiness worsened to the point that I couldn’t handle being there anymore. I asked to transfer to another troop and was granted my request. The leader of the troop I had been transferred to quit suddenly (not because of me, haha, she had a lot on her plate), and after talking to the service unit manager, I went back to the old troop. Ann told me Jamie had not been to many meetings lately and she would really welcome the help, and I resolved to come back and be an adult about the whole thing, and try to get along with her.

Jamie was at none of the meetings, until the bridging ceremony. Her daughter was, though, and she was rude to both me and HelloKitty. HelloKitty got so she really didn’t even want to go to meetings because Jamie’s daughter was always so mean to her. Then the bridging ceremony came and Jamie was there, rolling her eyes after everything I said, and told me the job I was doing decorating the bridge looked stupid. But the Scouting season was over, and I figured I’d deal with it when it came back in the fall.

It kicked off with a slumber party that was held at Jamie’s house. I couldn’t bear to be in that woman’s house overnight, so I begged off. Then the month of hell began. My grandma died, a lot of personal things happened, I couldn’t make Camporee because I was out of town, and then my husband had surgery next Friday. Ann would email me with spectacularly bad timing- every time she emailed was right after some major catastrophe and I was sending her back one-line emails telling her I’d talk to her once things cleared up.

The fact is, things haven’t cleared up at all. Finally, she sent me an email on Saturday that was fairly snarky. Understandable, if you’re looking at it from her end. She wrote,

"
Ever felt like someone was trying to avoid you — and doing a darn good job at it ???????
 

Again, I hope all is well with you, but I’m getting the feeling that
you don’t want to return to Girl Scouts.  If that’s the case, please
let me know and I’ll leave you alone … if that’s not it, let me know
when we can get together to plan some of the upcoming activities."

I knew I had to make a decision and I owed her an explanation. I wrote out every single thing that had occurred in the last month and told her that I just couldn’t continue. I did not tell her that the other major reason I was unable to continue was because Jamie was so snotty to me that the stress of just going and having to be in the same room with her was overwhelming. But that was a part of it, too.

I think we as moms get into volunteer situations like this all too often. Whether it’s the witch who is constantly snotty to you or you always end up doing the lion’s share of the work, we all get into volunteer situations that are too much to bear.

I think it’s okay to leave in those situations. Yes, you may be leaving them short. Yes, your kid may no longer get to participate in something that is really good for them. Let go of the guilt. If the situation is untenable, quit. The stress from those situations is almost always more than it is worth.

Tell me about it, mommies! Have you ever been in a volunteer situation that sucked? What did you do about it?