Greetings,

How amazing that working with the public can elicit so many different feelings. Today when the day first began, we had a school group of about 15 3rd graders from Mission, CA (near Sacramento). This is actually the same school group that Melissa, the education director of PRBO went to, and when she was in 2nd grade she made her first visit to Palo back in the early 80s with! At any rate, the school group was fun, and the kids were great as usual…

Then came the adults. I had a nice couple on a net run today, but niceness doesn’t always make it work. Despite telling them I didn’t need help closing the nets I was closing, the woman informed herself she must help me, and before I realized it, she had closed the net in the most improper way…resulting in 10 minutes of work to undo the “help” that she gave.

I normally love help, and who wouldn’t. But when you explicitly tell people you don’t need help, and they make matters worse…its hard to feel anything short of frustration.

~Chad (05/16/2006)