[RobotsVsKittens]

Jon Stratis put this very well.

The only thing I will add is that rarely will there be a solution that provides the 'instant gratification' you might be seeking after an incident like this happens.

When you say that you had to file a complaint twice, was it because another incident occurred after the first, or because justice wasn't dispensed quickly enough for you?

I encourage you to consider other perspectives in this scenario.

Those in charge, volunteer coordinators, event coordinators, FTAs may not see your complaint very quickly. When they do, what do you suppose they have to consider? Their first thought isn't "how can I remove this volunteer". It will be something along the lines of "this could be a can of worms where I have to verify what really took place, and I may not be able to in even 30 minutes". If there are many complaints against one person, as many have claimed, then the verification process could be less problematic. However, someone in charge should still give the volunteer in question the opportunity to defend themselves, wouldn't you agree? This volunteer's task may seem trivial to you, but it may be one she prides herself on, and if she were removed without explanation, it might be obvious to her there is a problem, and she may feel insulted that she was not given any chance to talk about it. Even if a volunteer leader does finally decide action has to be taken and someone removed, it is often not a trivial process. Those in charge will want to be very gracious themselves to avoid any hurt feelings. It may be a volunteer who was just having a bad day, and they don't deserve to be thrown away and treated badly just because they treated someone else badly. If this were a military or a business, things would be different. But this is a volunteer effort where often people are putting in time they don't have to, and we want to appreciate that by giving the accused, or someone just having a bad day, the ability to defend themselves or at least a discussion where they can learn from what happened and come back next year to do a better job.

Believe me : I have been on the receiving end of bad attitudes from volunteers before (and just about every other class of person attending a competition), and it does not feel good. I've had to deal with it in situations where it affects me literally all day while I'm doing a task that has almost no downtime. If it's something like rudeness, I've had to remind myself, "mostly, this is your ego being bruised, you can live with this for a little while, and then address it later". Also, I and/or others simply do not have the time to address it with the person during a fast paced competition. One reason is because it could involve arguing, which can be very time consuming and often not productive. Certainly if the problem directly affects the core operational functions of a competition, the person will likely have to be removed immediately, but I think this is extremely rare.

Really, issues like these are resolved after a competition. This is why planning is very important and a good amount of effort goes into planning events. As others have said, volunteers really can only be screened so much.

There is one thing I think could be done better - reminding volunteers about gracious professionalism and why they are all there. I've seen some volunteer coordinators/event planning people hold a short volunteer speech where they go over this. It's one of those things everyone knows, or everyone should know, but to hear it out loud can be useful and it can get peoples' heads into the right frame of reference for an event where things can be stressful.