SC - Servers eating free

[Jenne Heise]

> the SCA is a volunteer organization. For an event to be a success EVERYONE
> is supposed to pitch in somehow. 

*giggle* I will forever remember saying this to a fighter friend of mine (not about him,
he volunteered), and elaborating that 'merely fighting in the tournament is NOT
contributing to the event.' The poor man nearly drove off the road.
He's much better now.

> In the last decade or so I've seen a disturbing trend of people coming to
> an event or feast and saying "I paid my money, I want to enjoy the event",
> or "this is my vacation. I dont want to do anything!". The net result of
> this is that a small crew of folks gets worked too hard and burns out,
> while the larger group complains that they arent being recognised, or that
> events arent "like they used to be". The SCA I'm seeing is turning into a
> spectator sport, and it is my considered opinion that differential pay
> scales contribute to this.

I think differential pay structures are probably only a drop in the bucket compared, say,
to differential attitudes. Sometimes the 'war mentality' contributes to a blurring of
what constitutes helping and what constitutes playing (if hitting people with sticks is
contributing to the war effort, how come it isn't service?). Furthermore, everyone tends
to think whatever the other people is doing is easy, and then discount it . Also, some
people get older and burn out, and stop helping. Then the remaining people start to get
crunchy around the edges, too, and it stops being fun.

The longer this goes on the worse it gets: when I first started, I was eager to volunteer
but being told "You come to your local group events to WORK, if you want to have a good
time go to someone else's event" almost turned me off! In my group, we now have some
people who started out doing one or two things, and a bunch of people who do more, and
some people who do a lot. There's always going to be some people who never see that
there's more than a little to do to run an event, but the group has been trying to come
up with ways to move the burden around so that all the do-everything crowd don't get
burnt out, and more people can take more responsibilty.

- -- 
Jadwiga Zajaczkowa, mka Jennifer Heise	      jenne at mail.browser.net
disclaimer: i speak for no-one and no-one speaks for me.
"It's no use trying to be clever-- we are all clever here; just try
to be kind -- a little kind." F.J. Foakes-Jackson