#48 - Quitting

Tuesday, February 21

No, not my job, silly.  Work is pretty awesome.

Today I am thankful for guts.

I have made a habit of joining a choir wherever I live.  It's how I make friends.  It's how I met my wife.  It lets me get some music out of me, and that is something that changes me for the worse if it is missing.  So I joined the Camerata Chorale.  It took some email tag, but I showed up early for rehearsal last week, did an audition in front of half the choir, and got a spot.  Cool.

Rehearsal was so-so.  The music selection is great - Faure's Requiem (my 2nd favorite, after Ostin Drais') and von Weber's Requiem.  Also a very nice piece.  The people are fantastic, the location is fine, and the rehearsal schedule is just one night a week.  But the director and I do not see eye to eye.

In a very real sense, a choir like this one is a volunteer workplace.  The director is the boss, and everyone else is a worker.  The workers all have to show up on time, do their jobs, and follow direction.  The boss has to provide direction, in the form of criticism, suggestion, dialogue, or praise, as circumstances dictate.  The director here spends almost the entire rehearsal demeaning and insulting the sopranos.  The soprano section is no worse than any other section, but they get all the criticism and none of the praise.  The other sections are ignored, and it really hurts the entire choir.

I can work for a boss who criticizes me a lot.  I had a director in San Francisco who liked to pick on the tenors.  That was my section, I knew I could be better, and he worked with all the sections to get things where he wanted them.  I stuck with that choir for the season, and then dropped.  I didn't need the extra stress.

It was hard for me to go to rehearsal tonight.  I decided that I would go; I would give him another shot.  If last week was an aberration, I would stick with it.  It was not.  I stayed until the break, turned in my music, and walked out.  I've never done that before.  But it was the right thing to do.  I could not support an abusive boss, creating a hostile work environment.  Sad thing.  I'll go see the concert, I think.  Too bad I couldn't be with them.

In other random things, it snowed here over a month ago.  There is still snow from that storm piled up in some places.  It was 19 this morning when I left for work, high in the mid-30s I think.  It's been that way for most of the 16 days I've been here.  (Only that long?  Wow!)  Here's some snow, still hanging out in a parking lot.