Ethan’s Friday Evening Club

It’s Friday at the Baltimore Area Council.  Most of the professional staff has left for the day to get ready for Scouting events in their districts in the coming morning.  Ethan’s Friday Evening Club is getting ready with boxes.  The call has already been made to the IT folks to migrate files and information from your computer.  It’s not like you didn’t know this was in the works.  About a year after you were promotable Ethan and the boys moved you to one of the largest districts in the council, over 100 units, a district that had two full-time professionals before Ethan started cutting unit service to fund the expansion of the finance department.  Let’s face it, that is all BAC is anymore, a fund raising operation that occasionally puts on large Ethan events (that lose money, but make Ethan look good).  You’re a single father, veteran, over 40 and one of the few African-Americans on the professional staff.  You take the promotion, because not to will not work with Ethan.  Within a year, you’re on a work plan.  It’s an Ethan work plan, which means you have 90 days to get done what the last three DE’s were not able to do (yes, over three DE’s in the past four years). 

So you knew this was coming.  You thought you could out last Ethan, hell you’re about the last person over 40 who has been here since Ethan was hired who has not been fired, or demoted, you just needed a month, then no more Ethan.  Of course, that is not how Ethan works.  While you’re meeting with the late night bumper car champion of Baltimore the Friday Evening Club boxes up your belonging.  It’s after 5:00PM, no one is left in the office as the boys escort you out to your car.

Hell, it could have been worse.  You didn’t get a call during the weekend telling you that you needed to report to work on Monday to be fired because you should not have been fired on Friday.  You didn’t have to go through one work plan (successfully) only to be demoted and moved to another district (across the council) and placed on another work plan and when this work plan was not working for Ethan have the job eliminated.  Or told at camp on a Friday not to go back to the office while your co-workers call your cell phone asking why Ethan’s boys were piling all your belongings into the middle of your office.  The stories of Ethan’s Friday Evening Club are truly mind opening – yours is really pretty tame.

Your district chairman and commissioner have received calls, they most likely knew about Friday before you did.  Don’t expect any support from volunteers.  They really don’t care about the DE’s that work the districts.  You’re just like a person at McDonalds to them, “would you like popcorn with your order?”  You’re just another tree to the board of directors who can’t see the forest in front of them.  BAC’s board of misdirection has had three strikes in  a row with hiring Scout executives; John Maxwell got BAC into financial debt, Hugh Travis got BAC into membership debt and Ethan has gotten BAC into a program debt (with the closing of one of our camps due to attendance).  The best thing this board of misdirection could do is outsource the selection process for a new Scout executive to…the Girl Scouts?  The National Council will be of little use.  This same bunch recommended Ethan to us and now Greater New York Councils.

We wish you well and thank you for the work you did for Scouting and we're sorry that Ethan was your Scout executive.