Talk Coordinator: A pretty sucky job

by Open mind 27 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  Open mind

  I got this "privilege" thrust upon me for about 6 months many years ago.
  
  I was a hubby, father of young children, Service Committee member, working 2 jobs and then this. It truly is a thankless task. It sucks up TONS of family "prime time" (evenings) since that's usually the only time you can semi-effectively try reaching other elders on the phone. As soon as we got a couple more elders, I bailed from this job. Had to threaten stepping aside all together to make it stick. Sheesh. The P.O. at that time was a master manipulator.

  There's more to the suckiness of this job, but for now, I'll ask if anyone has any Talk Coordinator anecdotes to share, whether you were one or not.
  
  om
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  JRK

  Did you get stuck arranging the "hospitality" crap too?

  JK
• 

  00DAD

  I had that "privilege" for many years. Every Sunday I had this uneasy anxiety that lasted until the Assigned Speaker walked into the door of the KH.

  It didn't matter if I'd talked to the guy within the last 72 hours and confirmed, I just felt this all-too-familiar unpleasant dread until I saw them actually in the hall and ready to go!
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  PaintedToeNail

  When my spouse was talk coordinator, he made a list of 'A & B' speakers, as he didn't want to bore the people to death at the hall with tedious speakers. If there was a speaker he had never heard before, he tried them out. If the guy gave a 'C' type talk, he gave him one more chance, if he gave a 'C' again, he was off the list...needless to say, this made the job even more difficult. He was on the phone every night, searching for speakers. He would call the speaker the Friday or Saturday before to verify the guy was going to show up, he learned to do this the hard way, after several no shows.

  He once called a brother to give a talk and the guy said 'I can't, I moved.' Hubby thought the guy had just moved. In further conversation, hubby found out the guy had moved 6 months before!

  We were often the ones who had to host the speaker, as no one else wanted the 'priviledge'. I actually liked hosting, and entertaining people in my home, so usually it was fun. We almost always had a homemade meal for them, as I am a good cook. The speakers and their families were always very nice and sent thank you cards afterwards. One sister even sent me a package with a gift to match my decor! That was a sweet and unexpected gesture.
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  dozy

  I remember as a young , naive ms having this "privilege" dumped on me. The previous holder had made a total mess of it & I literally was given it on a Thursday & there wasn't anyone scheduled to give a talk the next Sunday ( or any Sunday after that. )

  Initially I hated the assignment. My own elders were often unwilling to give any talks & I ended up giving a couple of talks a month in my own & visiting congregations. I had to organise hospitality as well & that became difficult as so few witnesses were prepared to look after the visiting speaker ( the relief when the visiting speaker said that he was heading straight off after the talk or after the meeting was tangible. )

  That being said , once I had started to sort things out , it got a lot better & I actually came to really enjoy the job. I did it on & off over the years & the key is to have a reliable bank of a dozen or so elders from your local & neighboring congregations whom you can rely upon to give talks at short notice or fill in the difficult to fill weeks ( such as holiday times. ) I also made good contacts with the few capable co-ordinators in some of the neighbouring congs & we would help each other out.

  But still i used to dread the Saturday or Sunday morning phone call from the assigned speaker or his wife with the usual excuses ( brother ill / wife ill / kids ill / dog ill / congregation problems / transport problems etc ) why he couldn't come. Or the family whom you had arranged hospitality with who suddenly couldn't do it or who had "forgot". ( Thankfully my wife was always ready to rustle up a meal at very short notice , often popping off before the Watchtower to do so. ) So it was a relief when I finally got rid of the assignment when I stopped giving talks ( on the basis that I could hardly persuade someone to give a talk if I wasn't happy to do so.) But the guilt when I gave the file to the enthusastic ms was only partly assuaged by the fact that at least he had an assigned speaker for Sunday & the next 6 months as well.
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  SnakesInTheTower

  OM...

  yep... I was talk coordinator.... ironically, I wanted the position. Why? Because our previous coordinator knew basically no one and relied on the same rotation of local yokels or an outdated circuit list because the TC/PO was lazy. He would bring in some of the most horrific, non-qualified speakers ever. I even had a sister tell me that if she seen certain people coming in, she would choose that Sunday to go visit her sisters in a nearby KH or friends in Springfield.

  I, on the other hand, traveled in wider circles and had access to a huge pool of DC and CA-qualified speakers. All I had to do was ask. Usually the quality of speakers was better in those congos as well because, well, if you have DC speakers amongst you, you better rise to or you weren't going anywhere. Every once in awhile I had to take a stinker speaker to get the excellent ones. It wasn't that they were horrid, but they were .... boring. But the were long time, respected elders, so as long as they did not go to far off the beaten path, they could go out. I followed certain speakers along the outline, both to make sure they stayed on track, and to step in if they had a heart attack on stage. Hey, I had to bail 30 minutes into a 45 minute out of town talk once because I was sick (another story I may have told before).

  I liked the job. I had my whole scheduling in an Access database. My schedules were printed real pretty in Word and were easy for the elderly to read (a frequent complaint about some of the other things posted on the Information Board©.

  But, at some point, it became a burden. Not having a family made it a bit easier. I started sending myself out more and more because the situation in my congregation was becoming intolerable. I knew my days as an elder were coming to an end when, 4 months before I was removed as an elder, the PO took back the TC scheduling.

  Snakes (Rich )

  ps... about 2 months ago I got a phone call from a talk coordinator working off a really old list. I was removed as an elder Christmas 2006 -- best gift ever. (I will post this on the next post)
• 

  SnakesInTheTower

  This was only a month or so ago...I have been out 5 years....thankfully I found this post on another ex-JW site, so I do not have to retype. I post long enough as it is:

  So I get a phone call last night on the way home from work... 618 area code (Illinois) but I do not recognize it. I answer .... a voice says "Is this Brother Bailey?" WTF?! I say "This is Richard Bailey." (No way I am claiming Brother Shit with WT).
  
  Deep black voice : "This is Brother xyz [I don't remember], talk coordinator for Centerville Congregation (suburb of East St. Louis). Are you the talk coordinator for Wood River?"
  
  Brother Snakes : "You are working off of a very very old Talk Coordinator Contact sheet. I haven't been a coordinator or even in that particular congregation in years." (Uh, Brother Snakes was removed from those duties in October 2006 and deleted as an elder Christmas 2006, changed congos for 7 months, faded and left in August 2007 and never set foot in a Kingdumb Hell after that.... but I don't say that, of course). "You might want to contact the PO there about that.... its.... oh yeah, you can tell how long I have been around, still calling him 'PO'"
  
  Black voice laughs , "yeah, me too."
  
  Snakes : "Yeah, call Brother XX, I think he is now the contact there now. Have a good evening."
  
  ya know, I could have pulled an old 45 minute outline, reduced it 15 minutes, showed up Sunday in a suit and my briefcase... and given a talk and no one would have known the damn difference ... at least for a bit..... and it would have been a good laugh.... I can tell you those idiots don't bother to update their sheets very often.... anyone could pull that shit off... and serve them right.
  
  Just thought I'd share.... this WT shit sticks like shit on my shoe. Just when you think its all gone.... squish...

  Snakes (Rich ... yes above is my real name )
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  zoiks

  I remember as a young , naive ms having this "privilege" dumped on me. The previous holder had made a total mess of it & I literally was given it on a Thursday & there wasn't anyone scheduled to give a talk the next Sunday ( or any Sunday after that. )

  Dozy - the exact same thing happened to me as a young, naive MS. The horror!

  I was given almost no training or guidelines. I remember getting cornered at the CA by the other coordinators - they had all brought their scheduling materials and wanted to meet during lunch to swap speakers the way you might swap baseball cards...or maybe like a fantasy football draft. I hadn't received the memo, thank god.

  Rich - great stuff, getting a call out of the blue like that. Off topic, I recently got a call from the RBC about an upcoming project. Haven't been on RBC in at least 4-5 years, haven't been to a KH in over 2 years. Weird.
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  00DAD

  I wish I'd get a call like that to give a talk. I'd put on my Sunday Best, and work up an outline on the "Overlapping Generation".

  The funny thing is that "the Friends" probably wouldn't understand why they would be so confused by my "New Light" on this "Old Crap".
• 

  Open mind

  PaintedToeNail: Thank you for the reminder that there are lots of really decent JWs out there, just trying to live a somewhat healthy, "normal" life, even though it really can't be normal inside Watchtower walls.

  JRK: "Did you get stuck arranging the "hospitality" crap too?"

  No. Well, not as part of being Talk Coordinator. The Talk Coordinator just entered the name of a Book Study Group on the line for hospitality. As Book Study Overseer, I had the responsibility to make sure it was covered whenever it was our group's turn to cover hospitality. So, at least 50% of the time, when it was our "groups" turn, we ended up taking care of hospitality.

  00dad: "I just felt this all-too-familiar unpleasant dread until I saw them actually in the hall and ready to go! "

  Yeah, I always had a couple of outlines that my family was sick and tired of that I could give in my sleep if there was a no-show.

  dozy: "The previous holder had made a total mess of it & I literally was given it on a Thursday & there wasn't anyone scheduled to give a talk the next Sunday ( or any Sunday after that. )"

  Exactly. Our previous TC got all his "privileges" removed in one fell swoop and so this particular piece of shrapnel landed in my lap.

  snakes: Sounds like your aptitudes and personal situation made you an ideal Talk Coordinator.

  zoiks: "I remember getting cornered at the CA by the other coordinators - they had all brought their scheduling materials and wanted to meet during lunch to swap speakers the way you might swap baseball cards."

  A couple years after my time as TC, they started doing a once-a-year swap meet for speakers in our area. If your TC missed that "meet" your congo was screwed for the next 12 months.

  Let's face it, the JWs definitely don't want speakers who are good critical thinkers and can convey that in a talk. But there are plenty of other aspects of public speaking that made the difference between boring and at least somewhat attention-keeping. Hence the "A", "B", "C" grades given by PaintedToeNail's hubby.

  Here's where it gets really tough for a Talk Coordinator if he's from a KH with only 3 or 4 speakers who are approved to give talks in other Congos. That was the case for me for my short tenure as TC. We had one "A" speaker, one "B" speaker and the other 2 were definite "D"s as far as boredom goes. Good luck getting another TC to send a speaker if all you can offer is a "D" or maybe even no speaker at all since our body count was so low.

  om