BRIDGE CLUB COMMITTEES : PROFESSOR HU CHI KU CHI INVESTIGATES A RISING TREND IN RESIGNATIONS......

Intensive research has shown that all bridge clubs the world over have experienced a rising trend of committee member resignations. Why is this happening I ask myself ? What on earth possesses these willing volunteers to throw in the towel ? Or to storm off in a huff ? To me, the obvious thing to do was to survey all those committee members, who have resolutely stayed the course, to find out all the qualities, attributes and character traits one needs to have....to survive the trials and tribulations of the job. And out of the hundred or so different answers I received , the list below represents the top 20. Survival, therefore, seems to depend on committee members having the ability to :

1. Ignore guilt feelings about being voted in on a tidal wave of gerrymandering
2. Overcome gut-wrenching tedium and extreme boredom
3. Suffer fools gladly
4. Allow control freaks and/or lunatics to run the show
5. Remain calm even when nit-picking arseholes keep side-tracking discussions with trivial points of order, and pointless irrelevancies
6. Always vote with the majority irrespective of who they are. or what they are proposing. ( This is based on a Bigot-Johnson time-saving principle that states: the larger the minority group, the greater the likelihood of protracted discussion and debate. )
7. Make yourself at ease with people you would otherwise kill or maim
8. Suppress any desire to scream out in anguish, pain, despair and frustration
9. Develop a real masochistic liking for drowning in verbal diarrhea
10. Have no useful alternative pursuits at the times committee meetings are scheduled, or better still to have no useful life at all
11. Develop a passionate interest in agenda items of a trivial nature, or matters that have no real significance whatsoever
12. Vote if necessary opposite to what common sense or your conscience dictates
13. Abide by the Law of Committees, which states that the amount of time spent by a committee on an agenda item must be inversely proportional to the importance of the item ( or its cost )
14. Have no concept of time which has been lost, wasted or ill-used
15. Switch yourself " off " and " on " as and when the occasion demands
16. Never say or do anything, which allows the nit-pickers to enter the fray and rail-road discussions into the barren wilderness of puerile and pointless debate
17. Never introduce worthwhile initiatives, which might well result in you being made to implement and take responsibility for overseeing
18. Avoid making the mistake of volunteering to undertake positions on existing or new sub-committees
19. Remain utterly oblivious to any remarks or criticisms about your performance as a committee member : treat statements like " you incompetent, useless twat " as comic banter
20. Support every suggestion that the next meeting should be put back a few weeks, and that potentially lengthy and difficult agenda items should be put on the back burners

( So if you can see yourself meeting all these requirements, then you have got real potential to survive bridge club committees. In other words, you are the ideal candidate to get involved with a multitude of mundane, soul destroying tasks ..... to step in and fill the boots of those who just couldn't hack it. )