Always Ask Questions

So, this is probably a given... but I feel like in all situations of life... if you don't know, or are unsure of something, always ask questions!  I honestly don't feel like anyone should ever feel afraid to ask or whatnot, if you don't know, ask!

We had a group of students from Purdue call us about using the rescue for a group project.  All they said was that they needed to talk to me about a problem the rescue had, and as a group, they would discuss the problem and come up with a solution.  I vaguely remember doing something like this in one of my classes way back when, so I told them, that was fine.  They said they had to get permission to use our rescue, and would contact us back.  Some time passes, and they get the ok, and they tell me they need to interview our workers / volunteers who are at the rescue a considerable amount of the time.  So I talk to Jennifer, get her permission to give them her phone number, and pass that along to them.  I tell them, there's me and her, and that's it.  There's not a lot of routine volunteers, though I do occasionally get the court appointed community service people... but not a lot of people who volunteer and stick around. 

Next email I receive is that there's four people + the initial person who contacted me, and they each need to interview someone.  My response back was basically, well... there's still just me and Jennifer.  Never did hear back from them.

In all fairness, I didn't ask for more info about their project, and they also didn't volunteer at any point, in the two weeks prior to telling me about the 5 interviews, that they needed to do 5 interviews... had we known, they could have moved onto a different place much quicker. 

I guess my point is... they didn't know... and they didn't ask. 

Maybe they thought there would be volunteers out the wazoo here.  Or that I have a ton of employees, rather than occasional help when I can afford it.  But the reality is... we don't get a lot of volunteers, and a good chunk of everything is done by myself, helped by Jennifer when she's around.

And to me, I feel like this is a perfect example of... had they started out saying, "ok, we have this class project, this is what it's about... now the one thing is we need to do 5 interviews, are there 5 people who we can interview?"... I feel like this whole thing would have gone differently.  Obviously that's not how it went, and it's too bad that they wasted time that could have been spent on a different business.  But this is why it's so important to ask questions!

I'm sure many of you have heard me say, if you don't know the answer, it's not a stupid question.  I mean, there's all stuff that we don't know!  So we just gotta ask!  I know that can be hard sometimes... but if you don't ask... you may never know!  That is all for today.