updates: the volunteer holding a website hostage, the vegan breakfasts, and more

Here are four updates from past letter-writers.

1. An abusive volunteer is holding our website hostage

I am no longer a mere VP — I have been elected president! A short summary of my previous letters: I’m on the board of a small organization and we’re all volunteers. There were issues with our webmaster and our website, but the previous president wasn’t wanting to muck around with the site. I understand his reasons but I disagreed with him about it.

At our 2024 convention, the (now former) president announced that he was not running for reelection and that I was running for president. The webmaster pulled me aside after this and told me that he was planning to retire, that he’d identified someone to take over the role from him, and that he was anticipating being able to step down in December 2026. Yes, 2026. As in, 18 months from when we were having this conversation.

Flash forward to October. The webmaster sent me an email reiterating what he’d told me at our convention. I replied back agreeing with a lot of the points that he’d made and then continued on to say that having one webmaster was a single point of failure, we couldn’t rely on always having tech-savvy members with the desire and time to maintain the website, and my plans for how I wanted to change things. This … did not go down well. I think the summary of the months-long conversation is: while I definitely made some missteps, the only outcome he was willing to accept was what he’d already decided, and since that was never going to happen, we were pretty much doomed to be at loggerheads about it all.

I officially took office in January and as part of my president’s message included an acknowledgement of the work that he’d done over the years and then a description of what I wanted to make happen and a call for volunteers. And holy shit, did they deliver! I ended up with a fantastic group of volunteers, one of whom had retired recently and has a ton of project management experience. She took the reins and our first meeting was March 2025.

I am blown away by how talented and dedicated this group is and I am even more blown away by all the things that went into this site. We have an official privacy policy now! Legal disclaimers! Members can update their own privacy information! The site itself is GORGEOUS and we launched it right at the beginning of July, just before our yearly convention. I’m a little worried that we’re still borderline single point of failure on the technical side, but I’ve been assured that the team is good to go. When we launched, we did so with what we felt was the minimum viable product and we’ve been adding functionality, features, made some changes/improvements, all that good stuff, since July. Right now, we’re working on updating our directory in accordance with our new privacy policy. (Ooo, exciting!)

The former webmaster and the new web team, we’ve all reached a sort of détente with each other. And, ya know, given how everything went down, I’ll take it. Are we all going to be the best of friends? Probably not, but I think we all can either treat each other with respect or just nicely ignore the other person’s existence, and I’m good with that.

So all’s well that ends well! Now I just need to get started on my project for this year, but since it’s actually an idea from one of my VPs, I think I’ll just start poking at him to get it up and running.

2. Does board member’s comment mean I’m about to get a big raise? (#2 at the link)

To start, I think I need to be more transparent about what the original conversation was. The board member’s cryptic line about waiting for review season was, “You know I’m on the budget committee and we just approved raises for next year, so talk to me after your review. Don’t quote me on it, but I think there’s a new number in front of it if I remember correctly.” Which is why I spiraled about what that number could be and how much of the information was accurate.

Anyway, I ended up receiving a 10% raise, and due to some organizational restructuring since, I’m being fast-tracked to higher leadership soon too.

I don’t think I’ll be buying a house, but an apartment with in-unit laundry and off-street parking is in my near future!

Thanks to you and your readers for your thoughtful advice.

3. My employee is in remote limbo and it’s impacting her work

After reading through the feedback and comments I came to the realization that where Jane works was not the main issue. For those that are curious, she was able to work out a hybrid arrangement with HR.

The main issue is Jane’s work. The quality is inconsistent and I often have to hold her hand more than necessary for someone at her level. Over the summer another team member, Sam, who is two levels below Jane, shared his project work in a meeting. I was blown away by his thoroughness and analysis. That sealed the deal for me. I had an honest conversation with Jane about areas she needs to improve on and gave her an action plan to get on track. Our checkin on her progress is scheduled for after the holidays.

4. A group of coworkers are pushing for our in-office breakfasts to be vegan

The situation fizzled out eventually. People in charge of the breakfast responded that their priority is bringing people together, which means accomodating a wide variety of dietary needs, and the current lack of demand and overstock of the vegan breakfast options goes against the attempts to minimize food waste. The vegan group endorsing the request complained a bit but did not get a buy-in from the majority. The breakfast setup stays the same.

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