1228 Misery at the Museum

Wednesday, May 2, 2007

I went to the museum today. I'm getting busier, so I wanted to get as much done with membership today as I possibly could, so maybe I wouldn't have to go in again next week.

No such luck.

Thirty-three renewals had come in in April, so I had to send out thirty-three membership packets (and each of the eight-ish different levels get different packet contents). Also, I'd need to send out the reminders to those who need to renew in May. I figured it would take about four hours to do both, if nothing went wrong.

The data base went wrong. I could "find" last month's renewals, the count came to 33, but when I tried to print the address labels, the count shot to 133. That list was full of duplicates and bogus records. I spent an hour trying various combinations of requests, and gave up.

So then I decided to just do the reminders for May. That count came to 52! Fifty-two address labels to print and stick on envelopes, 52 copies of the "time to renew" letter, 52 copies of the membership form, 52 labels to print and stick on forms, 52 envelopes to stuff, 52 stamps to stick on, 52 flaps to lick and seal. Ack! Three hours!

So, I still have to do the renewals from last month, and now it looks like I'm going to have 50+ renewal checks and new members to process in June!

When I accepted this job and did the processing for February and March with the prior volunteer, we had all of 18 memberships in February, and 20 in March. It didn't look like that big a job.

Mother is not happy. Now I know why the previous volunteer wanted to get the job turned over to me before spring.

Russ is going to look at the data base and see if he can figure out what's wrong.

And I'm going to have to go in before the middle of next week to try again. The folks who sent in their checks in April will be very unhappy if they don't have their membership cards before the Shad Festival, but, well, I tried.
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