marla O.
3/5
I still love the garden but compared to last year the atmosphere has changed pretty radically. As a volunteer last year I felt welcome, respected and appreciated. That is not the case this year. There is a female employee who is rude, disrespectful and condescending. Volunteers have stopped coming when she is working because they can't take her attitude. I donated a lawnmower and some plants and she was argumentative about them. She "won't maintain" the hundreds of dollars of beautiful hostas and flowers that I offered. That is a direct quote. There is, on the other hand, a male employee who strives to maintain the friendly and welcoming community spirit that the garden was created for. There shouldn't be fields sitting empty in July and he is working hard to remedy that situation despite being constantly met with opposition. Volunteers enjoy working with him due to his positive energy and obvious people skills. Volunteers want to help but they should be welcomed, respected and appreciated by ALL staff, not driven away by hostility and condescension. I hope the higher-ups will take action to remedy the situation so that we can all continue to enjoy this COMMUNITY garden. ***EDIT*** The experience has not changed. Despite NUMEROUS complaints from many volunteers and visitors, management has REFUSED to reign in the negative employee, and the garden continues to lose volunteers. I attempted a one on one conversation with her about her habit of bad-mouthing the volunteers behind their backs and she responded that she was "not having this conversation" at the top of her voice and literally ran away while I was speaking. Mind you, if a volunteer has a concern, it is an employee's job to not only hear the concern but also to address it. She got hysterical and called her supervisors Shelly and Nicole to come to the garden. She said that I was attacking her and that she felt threatened, which was not at all the case. These two supervisors are USELESS. She tried to lie about what happened and when caught in that lie by witnesses she then tried crying her way out of it. I reported to these supervisors the behavior that I had witnessed that prompted the conversation ( She was yelling profanity about a volunteer who was not present that day within earshot of other volunteers. "F--- (his name)! I hope he never comes back!") I also told them how she speaks very nastily and disrespectfully of the former coordinator in front of volunteers and refuses to take his advice, and they attempted to DEFEND her behavior and Shelly got nasty with me. They blamed the complaints on some imagined conspiracy among the volunteers! Basically, EVERYBODY ELSE is the problem, not this one foul-mouthed disrespectful employee. There is also a tremendous amount of unnecessary WASTE which could easily be rectified but they refuse to hear it. Those supervisors have ZERO gardening experience or knowledge and they are not competent to run a garden. This garden needs NEW MANAGEMENT!!! If not there may not be a functioning garden in the future due to a lack of volunteers.
