Follow the Yellow Brick Rules

[Okay, Faithful Readers, you can breathe a collective sigh of relief. Today I am writing about neither money nor real estate.]

As you know, I've sung with a variety of choruses over the years. When you're dealing with large groups of volunteers, you must have rules. Clearly elucidated rules.

These volunteers are, for the most part, intelligent, educated, talented adults. Why complying with these rules is so difficult for them remains one of the great questions of my life (and one of the banes of my existence!).

For example, I will tell you about the recent performance of the Blossom Festival Chorus with the Cleveland Orchestra. As I told you, the Cleveland Orchestra is known as the "best band in the land." You'd think these singers would feel honored to be able to sing with this group and want to toe the line. I certainly did!

The women's dress code for this performance was a black mid-calf (or longer) skirt and a white long-sleeved (or 3/4 length sleeve) blouse that could be tucked in. This chic ensemble must be worn with black closed-toe shoes, preferably with a low heel. If one wore stockings, they must be flesh-colored, not black. Sounds simple, right? Actually, it was very flexible. The skirt could be straight or full, flounced, cotton, linen, silk. The blouse could be shirt-style, ruffled, even a T-shirt. It just couldn't be ivory. And it needed to be tucked-in (unless the woman was pregnant). If you didn't have such a shirt in your wardrobe, you could pick it up at Target or Wal-Mart for $25 or so. I found one at Nordstrom online for $65, and I will wear it again and again, as I love the look of a crisp white shirt with black slacks. The skirt? I made mine in an hour with about $12 worth of linen from Jo-Ann's. Okay, I know not everyone sews. But really, people. This was not a hard assignment.

It just annoys me no end when people are given a clearly written assignment and they refuse to follow it, choosing instead to complain about it and push the limits, causing annoyance and stress to the manager in charge of enforcing the rules.

Just grow up!

(What made me think about this today? I guess the fact that my director has decided everyone in the department has to be in the office no later than 9:00 a.m., no exceptions. And everyone has to take a one hour lunch, no exceptions. It's an arbitrary rule. And we're adults. There's not an audience watching us, as with the chorus. There's no real explanation for this rule. We're getting our jobs done and producing a very high quality product that's selling like the proverbial hot cakes. This arbitrary rule is yielding morale cuts, not increased work output. Oh well. Nobody asked me.)