Chairman singles out only female board member, asking her to watch visiting politician's children: 'I do not have any children, but everyone else on the board [does]'

Volunteering your time to an organization remains exactly that: volunteer work. You're not being compensated for your time, so you'd hope that your contributions would at least be appreciated and that you'd be treated respectfully during your time there. Still, organizations that rely heavily on volunteer work can have the tendency to—well, forget this—and take the unpaid hours of their dedicated volunteers for granted, treating them as if they were subordinates instead. After all, where there is any small shred of power that someone might hold over other people, there is going to be someone salivating over the opportunity to abuse it—especially, for some reason, in volunteer and hobbyist communities, where gatekeeping and presumptive hierarchy are absurdly rampant. 

This volunteer on the community stewardship board received a somewhat strange email from the board's chairman announcing that a politician would soon be visiting with his children. In the email, he directly asked the volunteer, the only woman on the board and the only member without children of their own, whether she could watch the politician's children during his visit.

There's not a whole lot of other context here as to whether or not the chairman who sent the email has other prejudices, so we won't make assumptions about his character. This could be excused as being simply misguided, it's important that this individual at least check their thinking and issue some sort of apology to the female board member. No matter how you look at it, it's shamefully silly, at best, to think that the one member who doesn't have any experience with children would be the best suited for handling them. 

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children employment job jobs Horrible Bosses volunteers parenting work workplace volunteer antiwork workplace-stories employment-discussion workplace discussion employment issues in the workplace
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