Patience is Tough!

Last spring I placed a cache at one of the local fire stations. The discussion at that time was to place one, and if that proved to be successful, to place others to draw attention to the breadth and scope of their operations. With six months of good experience with the first cache, I attempted to communicate with them about placement of others.

Meanwhile, their organization was going through some significant, yet unclear, struggles. The board bought out the Chief's contract, but I can't find anything suggesting why. My previous, very helpful contact, provided me with the name and e-mail address of the person that should be my contact moving forward.

I immediately e-mailed the new contact but got no response. Figuring he might be on vacation, I waited a week and tried again.

With no response to the second e-mail, I did a bit of spelunking and found a phone number for the new contact. I'd expressly started with e-mail so that I didn't interrupt his work, desiring an appointment at his convenience. With no response from two e-mail attempts, I called but that rolled to voice mail.

I left a voice mail and left my phone number. When I didn't get a call back within the week, I stopped by their main office and asked the receptionist if the individual was on vacation or might be out sick, but her response was that he was 'very busy.' Three days after leaving the note with the receptionist, I finally got a call back.

I understand that the organization is going through some leadership challenges and that they're in the midst of a search for a new leader which means extra work for the remaining leadership team. I also understand that it shouldn't take over three weeks to get any sort of response.

I'm now assured that they'll look into the possibility of additional caches, but it could be awhile. So much for my hope of combining the release of these caches with an event celebrating our local first responders. Patience is so tough to learn!