Just a little whinging

I never saw the movie Church Ball, and I imagine it was pretty lousy. I checked its IMDB page and did not see a role for the stake building scheduler. (Hi non-Mormons. I don't mean to isolate you, but I'm about to get very full of Mormon lingo, and I'm too lazy (and perhaps impolite) to explain all the details for something that ultimately doesn't matter a whole lot. Feel free to skim if the jargon is overwhelming. Or if you just don't want to listen to me whine. Mormons, however, are required to continue reading.) The lack of a stake building scheduler role was an oversight on the part of the scriptwriters.

March is just an insane month for using our local building. I mean, basketball season is kind of busy in general. In addition to there being mutual both on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, there are also usually three ward Relief Society non-Enrichment meetings during the month, and three pack meetings for the Cub Scouts over the course of the month. The Young Men and Young Women seem to play some sports, but not a lot. The men have basketball every Wednesday night, and the women have it every Thursday night. (Plus there are various wards having practices during the month.) Ours is the only full-sized gym, and the sports people are pretty insistent that it is the only gym that can be used for games. (When I have suggested using one of the other gyms when weeks have gotten kind of hectic, I have been immediately shot down.) But March also brings the basketball tournaments. Apparently the regular season is not enough to determine the champions, but we also must play a round robin tournament at the end, so in addition to the regular Wednesdays and Thursdays, there are tournament games being played on Tuesdays, Fridays and sometimes Saturdays. (Sundays and Mondays are obviously off the table.) AND THEN we are also hosting the regional tournaments at the end of the month, for basically two weeks straight.

In short the "cultural hall" (WHY OF WHY do we call it that? I just call it the gym, and I label it as such when I add entries to the calendar), is booked for nearly every night in the month of March. And if it's not being used for basketball, it's being used for a wedding reception, a blood drive or some other random event.

Thankfully, most of the people who call me and have to deal with me telling them all the times they can't have activities in the gym are usually very nice and don't want to kill the messenger. But sometimes I screw up and tell people they can hold events when the calendar clearly says they cannot (Yes, I am so dumb I cannot read a calendar, apparently.) (Like a few weeks ago when I told the stake basketball lady they could move their games from Thursday to Tuesday since that Thursday there was a stake youth event going on in the gym, even though I had already added a kid's Eagle Scout project activity to the calendar for Tuesday night. I do not know how I didn't see that event on the calendar when I somehow managed to have it on there TWICE.) Even then, people are usually nice and flexible. Sometimes people are rude to me, but so far those times have been infrequent, and generally I can just say, "Yeah, sorry about that. Let me give you SoAndSo's number, and you can see if they can make some kind of arrangement for you." (Like the ward mission leader who called to schedule a baptism three days before the event and had a very tiny window of time available. And there was already a day-long big, important stake event going on that day. Or the time somebody tried to schedule the field and pavilion (because our stake is fancy like that) for their wedding like ten days in advance.)

With all that said, I'm sure I can come up with at least half a dozen callings I'd put lower on my list than stake building scheduler.