I Can’t Commit To The Committee

I am sure every office has them. A group of people who meet like once a month and make some sort of a decision. Around here, they are called committees. I am currently on two committees and for me, that is one too many.

The first committee, of which I am a founding member, is the Fun Committee and yes, it is fun. I love it. Sure, it is a lot of work but we get to make the office a little nicer place by having lunches and raffles and we have a fun bulletin board. I am in charge of decorating the bulletin board each month. This basically means that I get to have kindergarten craft time and get paid for it. No joke. On Monday I spent two hours cutting a pastoral scene out of construction paper, complete with barns, blue sky, and cows. (This month’s theme is “Moooooving Into The New Year”).

The second committee, of which I am only a member because I was strong-armed into it, is Computer Systems Rep Committee. And yes, it sounds about as fun as the name. We only meet once a month but when I see that pop up on my Outlook calendar, I cringe. No one likes these meetings. There is a rep from every department and the only way to get off of the committee is to (A) move to another department where there is already a rep, or (B) Die.

I am this close to choosing option B.

For a while it was great because I traded off with another guy so we only had to go six times a year. But last week he moved to another department which already has a rep. He chose option A. And I hate him for it.

So today at 3:00 PM I have to trudge off to a tiny little meeting room and hear people vent about problems with our computer system. The only problem I have is that it sucks, but when I said this, I was told it would cost too much to fix that problem. This is the answer to every problem someone brings up. I often wonder, as I am wiping the slack-jaw drool from my mouth, why this committee even exists.

My goal, before next month’s meeting, is to figure out a way to break up with the Computer Systems Rep Committee. I need to explain how I don’t have time for two committees. That it isn’t fair for me to be wasting it’s time when we really don’t belong together. I promise I will let it down easy.

Maybe I’ll take it out to dinner first.

The Office Scribe