Someone please help! I need some insight and feedback, please!
A couple of weeks ago, our doorbell rang. It was a gentleman running for congress in our district. We were excited to meet him and give our support, because our current representative, in our opinion, isn't doing much to represent the people of the district. The gentleman asked us for a campaign donation, which we would gladly have given, except I am unemployed and DH is underemployed....we're not in a financial position to make any contributions to anyone at this time, much to our dismay.
However, we did offer to volunteer to help his campaign. We thought since I have some free time right now, perhaps I could help out by making calls or canvassing or something like that. So, the next day I called the campaign and left a message offering to help out.
Several weeks passed. Tuesday night around 8 p.m., the phone rang. It was the candidate, asking if we could give a “surrogate” speech on his behalf at a county party convention in the next door county to us on Saturday afternoon. It’s about thirty miles away from here. We said, sure, we think we can handle that. All we had to do was travel up there tomorrow (Saturday) and give the speech, shake a few hands, talk up the candidate and go.
He emailed me the speech the next night, Wednesday. In the email, all it said was to be there at 8 a.m. Normally that wouldn’t be an issue, except we are very tight right now. DH gets paid every Friday, which means that in order to buy food and other basic necessities, we have to float checks beginning on Tuesday. We have paid a lot in $35 NSF fees the past few months – the bank is making a tidy profit off our misfortune, but that is our problem. Unfortunately, we cannot make a check at the supermarket for cash back before 8 a.m. due to their security procedures – they don’t keep cash on hand before that time, not that I blame them. It’s just inconvenient for us.
Needless to say, that was a bit of a headache. I never heard anything from the campaign manager or the candidate on any additional details about the event, so I took it upon myself to contact the party chair to ask about what time we HAVE to be there and the order of events, what’s expected of us, etc. It took me half the day yesterday trading emails with this woman to get basic questions answered. Fortunately, I found out the event doesn’t even start till 10 – so we can get there in plenty of time. Thank goodness I did this, or we would be sitting around for two hours twiddling our thumbs.
Meanwhile, yesterday evening, AFTER I found out everything I needed to know, the campaign manager finally deigned to call me. He then asked me to give remarks after the speech talking about why I personally support the candidate. He also asked me to print out flyers to hand out at the campaign. Fortunately, we still have our Xerox machine from when we had our small business - that was one lease we managed to pay off. He said he would email me the PDF of the flyers so I could print them out and then cut/fold them into brochures. He also wanted me to forward the remarks I intended to make on behalf of the candidate so that he could make sure they were consistent with the campaigns messaging strategy.
Within 15 minutes I emailed the remarks. Today is Friday, the day before the event. I still have not received the flyers email, and nobody had followed up on my very brief remarks that I sent over.
But the candidate DID manage to call me when I was in the shower to ask my husband to attend another even happening concurrently in another county because someone else dropped out. That’s a bit of a problem, since we have only the one car.
I emailed back the campaign to let them know, and to inquire about where are the flyers and edited remarks. Still nothing. I’m a annoyed because it makes me nervous to deal with flaky people, and at this point I feel like they’re being flaky.
My husband is frustrated and now doesn’t want to go at all. I’m feeling the same way. We were prepared to eat the extra cost to go up there and take the time to do it. But it’s very annoying that the campaign hasn’t bothered to communicate in a timely manner.
How best to handle this?? Any ideas? I feel stupid for not asking about the details when we first agreed to do this. I personally have reasonably good follow-through. I just don't know how to handle people who ask for favors and then don't cooperate with you when you agree to help them.
I guess I'm really just venting. I think it's kind of rude not to communicate with people whom you've asked to help you. At this point, after replying to said candidate's request to attend the second event and asking about the status of the flyers and remarks, I've heard nothing. So I'm wondering if they even still want us to do this. At what point should one just give up? I've heard nothing back. What should I do, do you think? Should we still go tomorrow if we hear nothing from them?
