Bah! Humbug!

No menu plan today! That would require me to be full of loving and nurturing feelings and right now I'm more of an angry Mama Bear. Because it's been resolved, I can now go into more detail about my 'unbloggable situation.' Apparently, when the Big Fundraising Company picked up the kids' fundraiser orders, about 6 were forgotten. Because this was a pre-paid fundraiser, parents were understandably frustrated by this. Because Big Fundraising Company did not leave me either the white or yellow carbon copy pages for any of the orders placed; I had no way of proving one way or another that any of these missing orders were ever made-even though I recognized a couple of the surnames from when I organized the orders, deposited the checks, and left them for Big Fundraising Company to pick-up six weeks earlier. They said that we lost the order forms and were liable, although none of us ever left the school premises with them because we were worried about doing just that. However, with no copies of anything, I had no way of defending myself or proving anything one way or the other.

I've been just about as frustrated as any one person who likes to make everything right can be. There was no easy way to "fix" this. To make matters worse, one of the parents involved became downright ugly with all of us, even though all we told her from day 1 was that we were going to sort this out. She came into the school office so many times with her threats that she was told security would be called if she did it again. She got my home phone number and left abusive and threatening messages for me. She did likewise to the people at Big Fundraising Company. None of this made sorting this situation out any easier. The other five moms couldn't have been more lovely and understanding even though they all had reasons to be mad. I wound up giving most of them my super-secret cell phone number-so it's not that I refuse to communicate with parents, but I won't return a message that's threatening and the principal told my husband that he shouldn't either. (And he REALLY wanted to.) However, I have spent just about every morning and afternoon that I'm not working at The Agency trying to resolve this problem. Ultimately, we decided to ask the parents to gather what information they could about their orders (cancelled checks, people who remembered what they bought, etc...) and that we would reimburse them. Our PTA is broke most of the time and this was a huge hit to our already ultra-modest income, but it was also the right thing to do. The checks have been written and I will be in the school office handing them personally to everyone involved in this mess tomorrow morning and afternoon. Either me or the principal has kept everyone informed of what we were doing about this every step of the way. Not an easy thing to do when your child has a concert one night, a Girl Scout awards ceremony the next, and you have taken off two days to work the school Santa store by yourself until your spouse can help in the afternoon.

I am horrified that something like this happened on my watch, especially when I originally delegated the money and order collection duties to someone else. (Who is, if anything, twice as competent and organized as I am.) I have done everything I can to make this right. For the last three years, I have dedicated myself to this PTA and I've been part of just a handful of us to do so. I'm not perfect, but I'm also not power hungry. When my kids enrolled this year, I knew there wouldn't even BE a PTA if I didn't kick things into high gear and I think me, my co-president, and the other four of us who seem to do everything have done a fine job-this fundraiser catastrophe notwithstanding. So, you can imagine how I felt to come out of the school this afternoon to find my husband and the custodian chatting about a "note" someone had left me in spray paint at the bicycle racks. It read: F*CK THIS SCHOOL AND THE PTA. Mr. W cleaned it up, but I almost wish he had let me take a picture first. I feel violated, I feel threatened, and I feel like everything I have poured into this school for the last three years has been for nothing right now. They don't pay me enough to do this job. In fact, they don't pay me at all. I'll probably remember why I do it after a good night's sleep, but for now I'm just not happy.