Setting Expectations - Volunteer Network Administrator
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@Carnival-Boy said:
@Hubtech said:
as long as this isn't a mom and pop small country church....they have money, get paid, do the work, etc. etc. etc.
That's pretty much all we have in the UK. I find this thread fascinating as it the US seems to have a completely different culture around churches than Europe. I think there are a handful of evangelical American style churches that are gaining popularity here, but I've never seen one. Here, pretty much all churches are broke and rely on unpaid volunteers to survive. I guess because of that culture of complete amateurishness I'd never expect a volunteer to get yelled out - it just wouldn't happen.
Yep, same boat here. Most churches here struggle to pay ONE pastor.
It also depends heavily on the church your are in.
Don't forget that people ate the same no matter where you go. The faces and names change but the issues are the same. -
@thecreativeone91 said:
So I manage my churches network, it's a volunteer gig. We have a sem-small network. 3 Cisco SG300 50 port Layer 3 switches. 1 is an Access switch in our worship center, one is downstairs in the worship center server room with is access for all downstairs plus the servers. and one in the chapel. All have etherchannel trunks configured between them. We have a lot of traffic for services all of our IMAG screens and displays around the campus and in the class rooms is done over http://www.justaddpower.com/ which is HDMI encoded over TCP/IP. Each video source uses it's own vlan which is how matrixes are down.
Ok so there's the background on some of our network. A few weeks they asked to have VPN access from home. We at that time we did not have a public IP address as we are on a free connection through a WISP that is ran by one of my friends and he only does public ips for static addresses. Anyway, I told them I'd look into it. I ask my friend at the WISP if it would be possible to get a static IP on our connection and how much it would cost. He was nice enough and made the change right away and didn't charge us for the static IP. The Problem though is of course this changed our router config setup. It didn't automatically pull down this new information. The internet for them was down for about 2hrs total. I didn't know it was even down for a little while or that he had made the change. I got there as soon as I could to make the changes. 1 Person was in the building - a secretary. who was there a total of 30 minutes before the network was backup.
I got chewed out for this outage by leadership because the secretary was unable to do some of the work they needed her to do and downtime isn't acceptable . How would you address their too high of expectation? I told them if they want fast responses they need to higher someone I can't always be there, and I did something about it as fast as I could. Before I redid the network they were just using a Linkysys e2000 router/ap going straight into their old modem. It went down all the time then (and this was mounted in the ceiling where no one knew where it was so they couldn't reset it themselves).
Yeah, that's not cool. They sound like they are running one of those dodgy small businesses that think they are a Fortune 100.
You should confront them (kindly) about how they are treating you. It's not right and it is toxic.
Your work sounds exemplary and they sound like they expect too much of your time.
When you do confront them (not IF, damn it), explain to them that if they would like you there more then you will have to start billing them as what they are expecting is a contractor. You only have so much time that you can give to them before it starts impacting heavily on your home and work time. -
@nadnerB said:
Yep, same boat here. Most churches here struggle to pay ONE pastor.
Religion is a huge business in America. HUGE business. These are massive corporations with enormous budgets. There is no religion with these organizations, it is pure business ventures.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
@Hubtech said:
as long as this isn't a mom and pop small country church....they have money, get paid, do the work, etc. etc. etc.
That's pretty much all we have in the UK. I find this thread fascinating as it the US seems to have a completely different culture around churches than Europe. I think there are a handful of evangelical American style churches that are gaining popularity here, but I've never seen one. Here, pretty much all churches are broke and rely on unpaid volunteers to survive. I guess because of that culture of complete amateurishness I'd never expect a volunteer to get yelled out - it just wouldn't happen.
That actually restores a tiny amount of 'faith' into some religion (which ever one those poor churches are part of). Churches should be poor - they should be pouring all of their financial resources into outreach ... not making a fancy building, etc, etc, etc...
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@Dashrender said:
That actually restores a tiny amount of 'faith' into some religion (which ever one those poor churches are part of). Churches should be poor - they should be pouring all of their financial resources into outreach ... not making a fancy building, etc, etc, etc...
Yes, the goals of most American churches is very, very different than the goals of most European ones (or elsewhere in the world.) Remember the first major settlement in America was from "Puritans" who were an extemist cult group looking to found a power grabbing new colony where they could forcibly control the population while simultaneously waging a civil war in England where they successfully, for a short period, managed to overthrow the nation and put a religious dictator in control!! The Puritans were the 1600s equivalent to ISIS today - Christianity and religion were the absolute last thing that they actually cared about. They were the farthest thing from a real Christian that one can imagine, just like ISIS is nothing like Islam. So that heritage of religion as mask for business and religion as a mast for ethnic cleansing and religion as a mask for political control is a cornerstone of America and something that will take a very long time to overcome, if it ever can be.
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@Dashrender said:
@Carnival-Boy said:
@Hubtech said:
as long as this isn't a mom and pop small country church....they have money, get paid, do the work, etc. etc. etc.
That's pretty much all we have in the UK. I find this thread fascinating as it the US seems to have a completely different culture around churches than Europe. I think there are a handful of evangelical American style churches that are gaining popularity here, but I've never seen one. Here, pretty much all churches are broke and rely on unpaid volunteers to survive. I guess because of that culture of complete amateurishness I'd never expect a volunteer to get yelled out - it just wouldn't happen.
That actually restores a tiny amount of 'faith' into some religion (which ever one those poor churches are part of). Churches should be poor - they should be pouring all of their financial resources into outreach ... not making a fancy building, etc, etc, etc...
Yep. This is why I like working with God's pit crew and other disaster relief orgizations. I went to Alabama in 2011 after the tuscolusa tornado and help with cutting trees and re-roofing.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
@Hubtech said:
as long as this isn't a mom and pop small country church....they have money, get paid, do the work, etc. etc. etc.
That's pretty much all we have in the UK. I find this thread fascinating as it the US seems to have a completely different culture around churches than Europe. I think there are a handful of evangelical American style churches that are gaining popularity here, but I've never seen one. Here, pretty much all churches are broke and rely on unpaid volunteers to survive. I guess because of that culture of complete amateurishness I'd never expect a volunteer to get yelled out - it just wouldn't happen.
It's a different world. European churches are religious and good will based, actually give back rather than taking and are often community centers (physically or logically.)
I love living twenty metres from the church here in town.
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This is my laptop right now and the church tower.
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@scottalanmiller said:
This is my laptop right now and the church tower.
I see meeeee!
Edit for those who have no idea what I'm talking about have a look on the laptop screen, lower left side
... probably the closest I'll get to Spain 
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
That actually restores a tiny amount of 'faith' into some religion (which ever one those poor churches are part of). Churches should be poor - they should be pouring all of their financial resources into outreach ... not making a fancy building, etc, etc, etc...
Yes, the goals of most American churches is very, very different than the goals of most European ones (or elsewhere in the world.) Remember the first major settlement in America was from "Puritans" who were an extemist cult group looking to found a power grabbing new colony where they could forcibly control the population while simultaneously waging a civil war in England where they successfully, for a short period, managed to overthrow the nation and put a religious dictator in control!! The Puritans were the 1600s equivalent to ISIS today - Christianity and religion were the absolute last thing that they actually cared about. They were the farthest thing from a real Christian that one can imagine, just like ISIS is nothing like Islam. So that heritage of religion as mask for business and religion as a mast for ethnic cleansing and religion as a mask for political control is a cornerstone of America and something that will take a very long time to overcome, if it ever can be.
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@Bill-Kindle never studied who the Puritans were before, I take it? Oliver Cromwell's US arm. They came to the Americas because they had too much religious freedom in Holland where they had gone and found that they could not control their people when there was freedom. They came to the colonies specifically to have an opportunity to have a non-free, religiously intolerant society. If you take out the desert and Quoran from descriptions of ISIS, they sound exactly like the Puritan group of the 1600s.
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Speaking of which, I've seen Cromwell's death mask in England.
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Speaking as a systems consultant, I see several things wrong with this interaction. In no particular order:
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Time is money and volunteering is for retirees with nothing better to do. Invoice for your work at the market rate. ALWAYS. Discount if you feel the need, but always let them know you cut them a deal at your option.
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You didn't mention much in the way of communicating with the staff. If there was even a remote possibility of an outage, that should have been communicated.
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People can work around outages as long as they know they're coming. It's when shit goes down unexpectedly that people get angry. I seriously doubt there was a "no downtime" expectation. Instead I suspect it was a matter of timing and the interruption impacted a deadline. Also, not everyone employed by every church is on-site all the time. Is it possible the staffer made a special trip in to accomplish something?
So, yeah, from where I'm standing? Looks like some fault on both sides.
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@BryceKatz said:
Speaking as a systems consultant, I see several things wrong with this interaction. In no particular order:
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Time is money and volunteering is for retirees with nothing better to do. Invoice for your work at the market rate. ALWAYS. Discount if you feel the need, but always let them know you cut them a deal at your option.
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You didn't mention much in the way of communicating with the staff. If there was even a remote possibility of an outage, that should have been communicated.
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People can work around outages as long as they know they're coming. It's when shit goes down unexpectedly that people get angry. I seriously doubt there was a "no downtime" expectation. Instead I suspect it was a matter of timing and the interruption impacted a deadline. Also, not everyone employed by every church is on-site all the time. Is it possible the staffer made a special trip in to accomplish something?
So, yeah, from where I'm standing? Looks like some fault on both sides.
How is it my fault that I didn't know the guy at the ISP was going to make the change then and there. Again our ISP is free to us, nor did he charge us for the change so I wasn't going to complain about him making the change on a whim as the way I see it they should be grateful for him making the change.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
How is it my fault that I didn't know the guy at the ISP was going to make the change then and there. Again our ISP is free to us, nor did he charge us for the change so I wasn't going to complain about him making the change on a whim as the way I see it they should be grateful for him making the change.
Sounds like you didn't behave the way that your church promotes that you behave. You should have yelled at the ISP and been a jerk about it. That sounds like the kind of interactions that they feel are appropriate for people helping them out.
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@BryceKatz said:
Is it possible the staffer made a special trip in to accomplish something?
No, She's just there as a greeter to give information to people who may walk in during the week. Nothing more. She was wanting to post an event online and get it out on social media while she was there.
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Soooo, it's probably time we dropped the personal issues/soap boxes to do with religious topics.
Save them for twitter or slashdot. -
@nadnerB said:
Soooo, it's probably time we dropped the personal issues/soap boxes to do with religious topics.
Save them for twitter or slashdot.Maybe, but they play an important role. As a religious organization they are focused on image, behaviour, etc. If the network admin is there, they yell at him as a proxy for yelling at the ISP. If they were yelling at him, they must feel that there is a reason. Either they hate him, or they want him to pass it on, etc. But as they are people who's business goal is to teach behaviour, doesn't it play a central role in the conversation? In a case like this, how can one separate the religious behaviour from how we must interact as IT people?
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Remember, we are talking about an organization that IS a soapbox, in the closest literally sense before you actually use a physical soapbox (there is probably even a raised area replacing the physical soapbox.) It's difficult to discuss soapboxes without being on one too.
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This has been beaten to death. Advice has been given. And the topic is bound to get too hot. Time to lock this one down.
