BSA Jingle - "Waiting in the Parking Lot"

[Engineer61]

Haven't figured out a tune yet...

 

So, last Saturday, Scout goes off on a CS project. Before they leave, they set a time for pickup.

 

Mom and I go off, do "Saturday" stuff...prep a room for painting, etc.

 

We get back to the pickup about 15 min early...no biggie.

 

Pickup time comes and goes...eh ok, they are a little late.

 

15 min ... 30 min ... finally a call from the ASM that the ASM's boy decided he wanted to stay and do something or eat or whatever ...

 

Mom was not happy ... I did "Duck and Cover"

 

 

[ScoutNut]

This has to do with, or is th fault of, BSA how?

[Eagle92]

Sounds almost like my son's karate school, they tend to start 5 minutes late, and sometimes end 15-20 minutes late.

[Lisabob]

Part of youth leadership = discovering that one's decisions may cause unanticipated inconvenience to others, which, in turn, causes problems for the group members when they get home. One may hope that the youth who made these decisions will learn from that and not repeat it.

 

You were inconvenienced, and that's a pain. If it becomes a regular occurrence then have a quiet conversation with the troop committee chair and/or scoutmaster about the problem. Ask the SM to convey to the boys the problems caused by the boys' planning style. If it is a one-time thing? Chalk it up to minor irritation and move on. As you know, there are worse things to deal with and at least the kids were doing something good.

 

 

[moosetracker]

Sort of sounds like our SM. this past weekend was our fall camporee. He insisted on leaving on friday at 5pm. Although few parents could get out of work to drive at this time. Everyone was to have dinner before leaving. thursday evening, late, he emails asking for firewood.. Yeah like I'm going to hunt around in the woods at 10 pm at night for firewood for him.. So 5 pm Friday comes, he is late to the parking lot, when he gets there he states his son and he had yet to eat, so everyone had to stop so he could eat. Then he has the caravan of cars go over to whomever offered the wood so they could get that. there was something else he did, that slowed everything down.. they didn't leave our home town until about 7:30 pm.. Meanwhile everyone gathered early at 5pm to follow him around on errands for 2.5 hours.

 

I was already at the camporee with my son, setting up the district training site. But the scouts when they finnally came in were very pissed off at their SM.

 

 

[shortridge]

That's almost as good as the "Waiting in the Parking Lot" version sung by SMs and ASMs who have to stick around for parents who don't show up at the pickup time and can't be reached by phone ... then roll in an hour or so late because they had to get their hair done / go grocery shopping / watch the football game / and lost track of time.

 

Respect goes both ways.

 

Did you express your sentiments to the ASM in charge of transporting your Scout back to the designated spot at the designated time? Or did you just duck and cover and blow off steam here, where it won't actually change that behavior?

[Beavah]

Yah, da parking lot wait is one of those things, eh? It happens occasionally. It happens most often to the SM who is stuck waiting around for the one parent who got held up. It happens sometimes to da parents when the usual unanticipated problems of weather, road construction, road accidents, sick kids, flat tires, rangers slow checking troops out of camp, etc. etc. add up.

 

I think yeh would much rather have junior come back half an hour late than have the ASM speed down the highway weaving in and out of traffic in order not to inconvenience yeh.

 

First rule of scouting: Be understanding and kind to the men and women who give up their nights and weekends in order to do something nice for your kid.

 

Beavah

 

[The Blancmange]

Outrageous! Any leader who would do something like this is entirely unworthy of the responsibilty for supervising my child. I would disassociate myself from this troop immediately.

[Eagledad]

There was a time when parents were complaining that the Troop meeting was ending 30 minutes too late. I ask the parents to politely and respectfully talk to the SPL. The problem wasn't that the meeting was long, it was that it started late. A year later a parent who had another son in a different troop was complementing our program because the SPL always started the meeting on time without any adults help.

 

Barry

[BartHumphries]

That's why we usually just drop the boys off at their house after overnight campouts. Pull up, kick them and their stuff out of the car, drive off once you see that they were able to walk into the door. Cellphones don't always work very well in the mountains where we live (although AT&T has been getting better about that) and getting a message out that we had a flat or that someone lost their glasses just as we were about to go and it took a while to find them (or whatever) isn't always possible. So, it's been unofficial unwritten troop policy for at least a couple decades that, since we have to drive around the lake to put the troop equipment away, we might as well just drop the boys off, especially since all the boys that lived half an hour away split off into their own troop about 15 years ago.

 

"Yes, this is me, you're what? Going to be late? Well, we're all prepped to paint the bathroom and living room and it's late enough that we're not going to have time to finish what we needed to finish today. Could you please just drop him off at home on the way?" It could be tricky for the leaders to get him home while still obeying the Youth Protection guidelines, but in my opinion that's kind of the leader's problem.

[packsaddle]

Back when I as CM, I had the problem Beavah mentioned on many occasions. I had a few single moms, actually quite a few, and some of them would be unexpectedly required to work late, leaving me and my family with their boys. I knew what the score was so I just took the gang out for pizza or a movie or something while we waited...sometimes for 4-5 hours. To me, this was preferable to dropping the kid(s) off at an empty house, like the mom(s) suggested. Somehow we all survived it and I actually have some good memories of those boys and the fun we all had 'after hours'. I miss the cubs.