Volun-told

Newsletter 2024-09-06

My time is valuable. That’s a lie. I waste it with reckless abandon. The exact cheapness of my waking hours depends on who decides how I use them. When it’s up to me, they’re worthless. I’ll gladly burn half a day staring at a screen and then have no memory of what I watched or read. If someone else tells me what to do with my time, however, those hours are suddenly the most valuable commodity in the world. If you expect me to be productive, that will cost you. It’s a scam I run called work, and it funds my entire lifestyle. There’s an awkward in-between level where my time is valuable but I’m not paid for it. It’s volunteering, and I’m being sucked into it against my will. All I can think about are the countless alternative activities I could have done in that specific block of time. I’m never less helpful than when I’m ordered to be helpful on command. Somebody help me out of this.

My fourteen-year-old, Betsy, is in a pretty intense song and dance crew. The group counts as a class during the day and an extracurricular activity at night, when it has many lengthy practices. I thought that was Betsy’s time commitment, not mine. I was on board to be, at best, the driver, and, at worst, the guy who reminds her that she owns a bike. I would have known better if I showed up to the parent meeting, but again, I don’t like being told that I have to go places. It’s a wonder that I’ve managed to hold down a job all these years. It’s less of a wonder that I work from home. In addition to driving Betsy to and from all of her obligations with the group and also paying a considerable upfront fee, I’m expected to work at fundraisers. One of them is coming up this weekend. They need bodies to man a funnel cake stand at a local festival. The money will go to support the group. I don’t even want to work when I get paid. There’s no way I’m willing to do it for free. This isn’t some charity event where I’m saving dolphins stuck in trees. The “charity” part of it is the money. Instead of paying the drafted temporary employees, the funnel cake stand is paying the choir group. There was an easier way to get that money than wasting my Saturday afternoon, and I don’t mean by robbing liquor stores, although that wouldn’t be a bad plan B.

Photo by Bruno Guerrero on Unsplash

I’d rather donate money myself than jump through a bunch of hoops to end up with less money for more work and much more wasted time. Whenever the kids come home with yet another fundraiser from school, I tell them I’m not going door-to-door to hit up neighbors or sending out an email blast to pressure my relatives. If one of my children wants to do an extracurricular activity, I’ll pay for it. That’s on me, not the community. Not that I enroll my kids in anything particularly expensive. I sign them up for local sports, not European ski clubs. They’d have to sell a lot of candy bars for that flight to the Swiss Alps. I don’t know how much money working the funnel cake stand will raise, but it can’t be much. I’d guess the going rate is ten dollars an hour. Multiple that out by five people working for three hours and you’re looking at a hundred and fifty dollars. I can’t imagine the profit margin on funnel cakes can justify much more than that, unless it’s a front for some other, more illicit business. If the funnel cake stand can afford to donate five hundred dollars, I’ll know they’re definitely laundering money for a cartel. I can afford to cover my thirty-dollar share. I’m not rich by any means, but I do make better than funnel cake sweatshop money. Food service is the kind of thing I’d pay specifically not to do, even if there were no fundraiser involved. I just figured out how that choir group can basically print money. All they have to do is send out invitations to fake fundraisers people are willing to pay money to get out of.