Xerophytes might thrive in desert conditions — volunteers don't. They volunteer for a project or a cause out of enthusiasm and belief and expect something that is in some way fulfilling in return. Zeal, dedication, emotional involvement are common resulting traits and these are their Achilles heel, their soft underbelly; our target. Questioning their sense of perspective when enthusiastically and emotionally involved is, for instance, a sure-fire method of hitting that underbelly, cheesing them off — and that's the path to a good
sort-out.

Motivation for volunteering comes from wanting to feel good, wanting to look good, wanting to do good and mixtures of all three. Wanting-to-do-gooders are the biggest headache to have underfoot. Also the most likely source of the best work, but with their impossibly high expectations and 'you can't fire me' stubborn, disrespectful attitudes, it's perfectly understandable that there are times when you just need them out that door. Luckily they're the easiest to cheese off because they're the ones who are the most emotionally engaged and committed. Frankly, the want-to-feel-gooders tend to be docile and those who just
want to look good rarely make any kind of impact, so setting out to cheese them off is a bit of a waste of your valuable time.

Now it's about time we stop wasting said valuable time with introductory paragraphs and get on to some practical suggestions:

• Demonstrate that the time and money they save you is being frittered profligately away on items they will not identify with as being 'in the spirit of The Cause'. Purchasing invoice authorisation rubber stamps and attending week-long staff team-building sessions in choice locations works well. (Have a listen for '£40 for a rubber stamp!?'¹ — that's pay dirt.)
• Goal post-moving without warning and resulting in wasted energy will make them feel like right fools and miff them nicely — wait until they've set up the forthcoming year's schedule before announcing that 'Ooops, I forgot to tell you, but at the last Board meeting it was decided to double the number of sessions required per year.'
• Just as surprise goal post-moving wastes their time, so does your repeating their work yourself on the excuse that at the end of the day (bonus cheesing off points for getting that phrase in) it's your head on the block (that one too).
• Incongruity of goals is a major source of friction obviously, and given their typically idealistic aims and your pragmatic ones, it shouldn't be difficult to achieve. Keep these differences unacknowledged and undiscussed and you've a constantly renewable source of cheesing-off fuel.
• Undermine morale and the quality of what they do in terms of output and image by bringing in completely incompetent newcomers and then neither train nor supervise them but let them run amok.
• Equally rewarding those who contribute and those who don't, those who do quality work and those whose work is something to upset the BBC's new profanity filter², will have the same undermining and cheesing-off effect.
• Both not having enough work for them, and being too busy to answer their concerns, are individually cheesing-off, but they work even better as a pair if you can manage it. Refer to concerns as whinges and you can triple your score.
• Yet another, and a classic, stroke is to be unappreciative. Volunteers will find all of the above distinctly unappreciative but make them feel utterly stupid for giving up their time in order to be so abused by adding in a dash of rudeness, or, to be more subtle, some words of praise that being unaccompanied by active consideration will be perceived as an intelligence-insulting con-job.

Concluding, the process can be summed up as squash them, waste their time, forget to communicate, take them for granted, pat them patronisingly on the head, then punch the air shouting 'Sorted!' as your headaches gallop away over the horizon into the deep blue yonder.

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