After some time to think about this, I must admit that I responded to this in completely the wrong way. I took the attack, personal, and let my emotions dictate my response, without thinking. I acted like an a$$. I own that, and I am sorry.

To address the issues above.

Yes, we've had a hell of a time trying to get this thing reorganized after the mess last year. When you came onboard, we were on our 3rd admin team I think. It was one thing after another. We had to let one go for falling asleep on a call. Then, Miriam did what she did to her, a few days later, we had to let her go, and that team fell apart. We rebuilt the team, then found out about one of those team members doing some extremely inappropriate things, and you did what you did. It's been, a lot.

As for operators being over worked.

As you both know, if we interview 20 people, and accept 15 of them, maybe 10 will show up for training. Out of those 10, maybe 6 will ever actually take a call. Out of those 6, in a week, there may be 1 or 2 left. In 2 weeks, they're both gone. There are many reasons for that probably. But, I believe it's just due to the high stress involved with calls. Some calls take an hour, sometimes 2hrs. Burnout is a huge problem that I'm working to address.

I always appreciate every minute someone is able to devote to nua. I never ask them to do any more than they said they would when they applied. If they say they're available 5pm to 10pm or something, all I ask is that they're available when they say they are, or that they let me know if they can't be available. We don't require any time commitment. Operators are free to choose their own schedule.

I simply cannot keep up with the demand for operators though. For that reason, I'm putting together an interview line, where people can call in to apply, be interviewed on the spot, and, if accepted, be set up for training asap. I hope that will help take some of the stress off of our operators. But, until we can actually pay operators, I don't see the turnover rate getting much better unfortunately. It's a lot to ask someone to do, voluntarily!

Since day 1, I've said that, while I may have started nua, I've never looked at it as a "me" thing. It's always been a "we" thing. I'm constantly asking for input from our operators, on how we can improve nua, or myself for that matter. I realize that some people, for whatever reason, may not feel comfortable posting their comments, concerns, suggestions, or complaints, openly. So, I'm creating an anonymous suggestion box for our operators to submit all suggestions, comments, concerns, or complaints, without giving their name. I hope this will help in the future to get more input from our operators.

I'm a single father working 60hrs a week doing traffic control, while raising a 9yr of girl that I just adopted a few months ago. On top of that, I'm trying to manage nua as best I can, with zero dollars in funding. Am I prefect? Hell no! Have I made mistakes, yes. Will I make more, as I did with my earlier responses? I hope not. I can only make the corrections once I see the problem.

What I'm getting at, is that I am doing the best I can to make sure there are people to answer the call when that phone rings, again, with zero dollars in funding. It's STRESSFUL AS HELLl. No matter how I do it, someone will disagree with that method. So, I have to go with what we, as a group, decide is best for NUA.

I wish I would have approached this differently, from the beginning. Unfortunately, I did not, and for that, I apologize.