[b1ackcr0w]

Recently, this whole subject has bothered me somewhat. Some very experienced marshals that I respect a lot, had a word in my ear after I got very vocal over some issues.

I have given the matter a lot of thought since then. The following is not intended to offend. Neither is it my intention to deride the fact that at many venues we are very badly treated. The intention is to play devil's advocate. To question why we are making little progress despite our efforts. To try and figure out why few people are acting on our requests. To figure out what the other sides of the arguments are and how might that influence our approach and negotiate more effectively.

At work, I recently had my annual 'Employee Appraisal'. Like many companies, mine is getting very twitchy about investing in training because often employees get overqualified for their own job and want a job that use all their skills. Eventually, the employee leaves for another firm, with the first companies investmant in training eventually lost. So one of the questions on the appraisal is aimed at getting the employee to fully use their own access to training. The question is "What is the employee doing to help themselves"? It suddenly dawned upon me that many more of the problems marshals face could to some degree be solved by the marshals themselves. This made me wonder about the whole issue of self help. Take, for instance, marshals huts? We all want them, we all moan about them. How many of us have actually offered any of our time to put one up if the materials were available? Are we being just a little naieve to expect them to appear from nowhere? In any capitol project, no matter how big or small, it is the labour element that will often make or break the project. If we really need these huts so bad, why do we never offer to put the things up?

Wether we like it or not, most of the organising clubs are no longer clubs any more, they are businesses. That means that we are involved in a business negotiation. Our moral argument is clear, however our 'business case' is quite weak when seen from the perspective of a business. If we took apart all the requests we make of the circuits and venues, and made sure that we had put in place readily available self help before banging our fists on the table there would be two nett positive effects.
1. The costs to the organising clubs would be lower, increasing their likelyhood of agreeing.
2. We would be presenting ourselves in a much more positive light and more likely to finally get the respect that we know we've earned.

This is probably not going to be a popular view, but I think it is one that we all should at least consider.

I mean neither to imply that the above is true in all situations or to cause any offence, but please mull it over.