Letter, Steward to a Member, on Taking On Too Much

Dear —,

You have asked to take the Tuesday warm room in addition to the returns shelf, the transport list, and the minutes. I am going to say no, and I want to set out why in writing so that it does not sound like a judgement on you, which it is not.

Four duties held by one person is not four duties. It is one arrangement with four ways of failing, and when it fails it fails in February, all at once, when everybody is tired and nobody has been asked to stand by. I have seen this three times and on each occasion the person concerned was the most reliable member in the house, which is precisely why they had been given everything.

The house does not need you to do more. It needs the returns shelf to be done on the second Saturday for the next ten years by somebody, and it would rather that somebody were you than that you were briefly magnificent and then unavailable.

There is also the plain matter that a duty held by one person is a duty the house has already lost. If you carry the warm room as well, nobody else learns the boiler, and when you move, or are ill, or simply have enough, we will be standing in a cold room in December looking for the key.

So: keep the three. If you want a fourth thing to do, sit with Mrs Ostrowski on a Thursday and teach her the returns shelf, and then give it to her in the spring.

Yours, and with thanks for the offer, which was meant well and is the reason I am writing at this length,

— A. Yusuf, Steward