Hivemind, I need a nice way of telling an enthusiastic volunteer to back the f*ck off. I don't want her making calls as if she represents us, and I need to tell her that we've been doing this for months and her suggestions of how we should be doing things are unwelcome (because taking the time to explain to her why her way is not the right way takes time out of my day that I need for other things).

I think what I might do is have a sit-down with her and tell her: "this is the plan we laid out in terms of services and marketing for the next 3-6 months. It is clear to many of us that you may not agree with our direction. Can we attempt this plan for the next few months? We can have another conversation in 6 months revisiting this issue if you feel things are still not working."

That would work if she was a volunteer in my library, but she's volunteering in the dog search.

she's volunteering in the dog search.

Oh, wow. I would pretty much tell her that Sass is *your* dog, and while you're grateful for her help, if she doesn't want to help you in the way that you have indicated that you need, then you don't need her help.

That might not be what you want to do, though; I don't know the details of how much help you have in the search. But someone who's coming in and trying to change things because she thinks her way is better is NOT someone who's going to actually be helpful to you, IMO, and you might just be better off telling her "Thanks, but we don't need your help."

oh! I see. goodness.

I don't think you have any special obligation to be nice to her, honestly - be as blunt as possible in saying "The experts we are working with have been very specific in telling us to use x,y,z methods and if we start making up our own rules it will not help."

How about "I can't express how much I appreciate your help, and your working with our plan. It took a long time and a lot of tears and stress and back and forth to create it. We really need to not deviate from it so that we're all on the same page."

It's something of a recurring problem, i.e., people report in to tell me they did something not particularly helpful. One example is someone who tells me they drove around for 2 hours looking for her . . . in a place she hasn't been seen for a week.

I've written something up that says, in effect, what Teppy suggested, and mentioned that she really needed to read the FAQ as that would answer a lot of her questions before she emailed me again.

But I am seriously at my wits end with well meaning people who hear we've been trying to catch her for nearly 7 months and say, "Have you checked the shelters?"

Yeah, that's got to be annoying and painful. And painfully annoying! Unfortunately, I don't think there is any way to avoid those people while still continuing to interact with new people. (I'm sure ita can tell you about all the migraine tips she gets....)

I think one way to handle this for your own sake is to limit the amount you'll interact with people like this. Like, check incoming emails for actual sightings and stuff, but otherwise commit to only reading and replying to incoming emails for a set amount of time on set days. You could even set an auto-reply to say something like, "We monitor this email account for current sightings, but due to our busy lives and the volume of email, we cannot reply to individual email suggestions. Please consult the FAQ for our search plan and monitor the blog for active volunteer opportunities."