From: EC92@AOL.COM
Date: Sun Mar 05 2000 - 14:53:04 CST
I'm probably about to get myself in trouble, but we need to keep things like
this in mind as we work with our councils and their staff:
I made it to a council store on Saturday (major project, trust me) where
there were two guys buying uniforms, apparently for the first time. I spent a
half hour there buying NOTHING because there was a crowd and I was there
mainly for turning things in. The guys were wandering through the awards
trying to find everything they could sew on. Next time someone accuses me of
being a knot freak for the things I've received, I'll think of these two.
They wound up at the front desk with hands full and asked if they could wear
the interpreters strip, and were asking the youth working the counter if they
could. He paused in confusion, and I said "its in the 2000 Boy Scout
Advancement book". He wandered off with the guys, but they returned before I
was finished at the counter. The kid started asking the adult what to do, and
she started with the following statement "National tells us that all they
have to do is..." and it was nothing LIKE the requirements and basically was
something like "say your name in the foreign language" (which would give me
about 20 interpreters strips if THAT were the only requirement....).
I looked at the kid and said "didn't you find it?" which he answered in the
negative. I turned, grabbed the book and (through an amazing act of chance)
flipped right to the page and handed it to them behind the counter as if I
knew exactly where to find everything in the book.
As I was leaving the store one guy asked "are you in charge around here?" and
I responded no, but apparently I should be. And that sometimes it seemed as
if I was.
I answer many, many questions with the information that exists in print, that
anyone can find, but instead of doing research they decide they'll just ask a
DE or DD or evern SE or the store staff. So does Paul, and Mike, and a number
of others here on the list. It never occurs to some people that these
"professional" people do not spend as much time looking through the printed
materials as we volunteers do and in many cases make up an answer rather than
get the facts. And when we don't have it in print, we usually do not ask
someone for the answer, but for the manual or booklet to acquire for the
information (I remember calling Irving once and asking Cub Scouting people
for the page and paragraph in a manual where I could find the evidence I knew
existed but that a Pack was not willing to listen to and wanted to make up
their own rules).
Y'all need to carefully exaluate exactly WHO you trust to answer you with a
sentence starting "National tells us..."
Tom Petrik
