Hassled, Harried And Bewildered
Current mood: Angry 😡
I am not having a good week and it’s only halfway through.
Having taken over a site two years ago and pretty much turned it from an embarrassment into something pretty neat, I know find myself being continually questioned about what the new site can, or can’t do.
I’m being asked to integrate an open source forum into a bespoke membership system – which would involve a lot of forum script hacking and far more work than I can handle in my spare (hah!) time. Added to which, it involves ramifications that the ‘admin committee’ haven’t even thought through properly.
All in all, I feel it’s a recipe for disaster and, quite obviously, I’d rather not contribute to a disaster because, at the end of the day, it will be ‘my fault’. I’m the one who will be expected to run around like a headless chicken trying to ‘fix things’ when the proverbial hits the fan whilst simultaneously trying to earn a living as a professional web developer
However, every time I try to warn this committee, I’m questioned, queried and have to repeatedly elaborate and explain over and over again. I’ve already spend hours at a time composing emails explalining myself and outlining reasonings. Yet the overwhelming feeling that I’m getting is that I’m not to be trusted. Either people think I’m too lazy (which, given the sheer amount of work I put into the last site, is hard to understand), I have some sort of hidden agenda (true – I like to sleep occasionally and see my family) or I’m not technically capable (given the excuse for a site that I took over, that’s a joke, yes?).
I also have the feeling that if I tried to question other people’s abilities or reasons in the way mine have been, I’d be sharply reminded to ‘stick to my job and let others do theirs’. Yet the world and his wife fancies themselves as a would-be web developer and is therefore eminently qualified to criticise and argue with what a webmaster says.
Hey – any idiot can do it – right?
If this was a paying client, I’d have told them to take their work elsewhere unless they were able to come up wth the kind of cash that would keep me working full time for about 3 months. But all of this work is voluntary!
Right now, I’m sorry I volunteered and, for the time being, I’m staying well clear of any discussions on the subject for fear of completely losing my rag and telling some people exactly what I think of these ‘ideas’. As it is, I’m seriously considering un-volunteering as the whole business has left me with a very bitter taste. If they can’t trust me and take into account that, as I do this kind of thing for a living, I might just know what I’m talking about, then I think they need to look someplace else for a webmaster…
