samMaddening, entertaining, rewarding: Committeesple

Maddening, entertaining, rewarding: Committees

They say that you learn the true measure of a person’s character on the battlefield. I know a much easier way: sign ’em up for a committee. According to my long experience, one of three things will happen: some people will arrive front-loaded, raring to go with great ideas that they won’t bring to fruition. Some people will make excuses (sometimes legitimate) and eventually stop showing up. Finally, the most rare and precious scenario: some people will come through, usually quietly and with little fuss, over and over again. If you’re a committee chairperson, as I am, you will treasure these people forever, even if your fondest memories revolve around the times you pulled inky accordion-folded paper out of the guts of the xerox machine together or tried to cut muenster cheese into cubes with plastic knives — the really short bendy ones.

No, committees are rarely glamorous. You get your hands dirty. But I don’t think I’m a sucker to stick with this particular line of unpaid work, to have entered the perverse elite made up of the five percent of people in a given organization who do 90 percent of the work. And despite the uncomfortable linguistics — it’s a short step, after all, from “committee” to “committed,” as in “institution” — I don’t think I’m nuts.

When people say that they hate committees, I think they mean they hate bad committees, which is likely the only kind they’ve ever encountered. I know this because I’ve been lucky enough to serve on a few good ones. Two years ago, I had a good committee bequeathed to me by its former chairperson, and I’m trying to keep it healthy and active so that I can pass it along proudly when my time comes. It’s the library committee at P.S. 3. It meets Friday mornings and consists of a small group of parents who are unfailingly trustworthy, thoughtful, hard-working, friendly and not overly fond of the sound of their own voices. Granted that libraries tend not to be hotbeds of conflict, but we’ve never had a fight, or a failure. When the world feels particularly unstable and mean, as it does so often these days, I feel grateful for this Friday morning haven of sanity and harmony.

The former chairperson is a woman I became friendly with a few years ago when our sons were in class together. Little did I know that she was also a committee genius, something I wasn’t sure existed until I witnessed it in action. Somehow — her methods are so subtle I’ve never been able to pin them down — she set her sights on a few of us likely candidates and made us want to come, teaching us and making us feel at once safe and valued. Before I knew what was happening, I was sewing banners and learning library software and shopping for new carpet (this was after 2001, when four displaced classes from P.S. 89 Downtown spent half the year camped out on the library floor).

I could give you a stump speech on the rewards of this supposedly thankless work: effecting change, having a voice, building a community, etc. But I think the noble political impulse has to be paired with some kind of personal gain if you want to sustain a committee member. Committees are very good with nervous energy and (my specialty) guilt. Some people, imagining their body to be under attack from allergens, go crazy producing histamines. But I respond to most perceived threats with a raging guilty conscience, even if I’m not the one being threatened. There’s nothing like a good workout with a stapler or a phone list to put me back in the guilt black.

Committees are also social. You can’t be like my friend who, when she found herself the front person for a highly visible organization full of cranky people, confided to me: “I just don’t like people enough for this job.” It helps if you find people endlessly fascinating, with their always weird mix of intelligence and obtuseness, charm and neurosis, their changing facial expressions and inimitable styles. Committees are also the quickest route from the outside to the inside of an institution, and inside the gossip is always good (and usually less nasty than the main sport of the outsiders, which consists of complaining about the cattiness of the insiders).

So what’s the deal with the bad committee members? Some of them, to be fair, get sideswiped by work or family crises that have to come first. But what about the ones who burst onto the scene but then never deliver the goods? Some are the maitre d’s of committees: their skills lie in making an impression up front, not toiling in the kitchen, and I suppose a skillful chairperson will find them an entryway or a lobby and set them free. Others just aren’t built for collaboration, which is fine as long as they eventually learn that truth about themselves (picture Rudy Giuliani as a U.S. senator).

And what about the people who do sign up but etherealize after a couple of meetings? I guess they haven’t ever pushed past their own resistance or shyness or self-doubt and actually tackled a job. If they did, they might learn how much better the air is on the other side, and how much easier it usually is just to do the work than to slink around with their head averted in shame. After all, what is most committee work but standing behind a steam table with a big spoon, or putting information on poster boards with magic markers, or making arrangements with the janitor? Yes, there are the phone calls too, usually to recruit additional people. Some people delude themselves into thinking e-mail provides an easier way. But as useful as it can be for transmitting information, e-mail fails at what may be the most basic function of a committee: making connections between people.

This year we’ve welcomed a couple of great creative new members into the library committee. But I’m sorry to say that two of the most stalwart library moms, women I’ve shelved books with and worked out computer glitches with for years, will be moving on in June. I will miss the wonderful working relationship we’ve developed during our years on the committee, which might be described as friendship mixed with productivity.