I am a room mother with another young woman. We are both new to the district and have never been room mothers before. At the room mother orientation, we decided to split the responsibilities 50%. However, as the first classroom party approached, it became apparent that I was to do EVERYTHING. She is a half-a$$ volunteer, showed up late to the party and didn't bring enough materials. I'm convinced this woman is incompetent. She does absolutely nothing and there is absolutely no reason why I even need her. Sometimes I feel like removing her name as 'room mother' from my weekly memos that are sent home to the parents. Now that the second party is approaching, I aligned myself with mothers from another class in the same grade level and have decided to move forward on class planning without her. She doesn't even review the volunteer orientation package, does not reference it to learn the rules. To make matters worse, she is the class treasurer and does not even know what students paid their class fees. She is a do-nothing, pathetic room mother. What a waste!

In elementary school, our most popular event was Breakfast with Santa, a fun Saturday morning event with literally more volunteers than can be used.

One year, two of the moms got into an altercation which escalated into a physical FIGHT with one trying to choke the other. Police were called and the one that was the instigator ended up in the back of the deputy's car for a cooling off period. (They ultimately decided not to arrest her.)

The only saving grace for this debacle was that it happened in the outer foyer at a time when the kids and families were inside the cafeteria focusing on a specific activity.

Also, the students are used to their friendly neighborhood deputy being around for drug awareness and safety programs, so it wasn't too odd that a sheriff's car was parked out front.

Very few attendees knew what was going on, but the PTO leaders and school administrators had a crazy situation to handle. We were stunned and never would have believed such a thing could happen at one of our events.

When we have leftovers (unless it is on the weekend), we leave them for the faculty. We advise our teacher rep so the word spreads and the teacher rep makes sure they are gone by the weekend. The staff always appreciates any extra food that shows up in the faculty lounge!

Maybe you can tell the freeloader that while you appreciate her offer, you'd appreciate her helping you put the food into the staff refrigerator so it can be enjoyed by your well deserving staff.

We have a parent in our group that is a mother that comes to all the activities, which is awesome & greatly appriciated. We know we can count on her attendence, but sometimes QUALITY IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN QUANTITY. We are struggling to rebuild our group & are so happy when we have more than 6 parents at a monthly meeting, so I love to see her there, but she's such a free-loader. I try to tell myself to not dwell on the negatives, but focus on the fact that she's present, something that I can't say about over 90% of our school's parents.
This lady seems to only come to events (which are practically all of them) that offer a free meal. I'm very aware of here home situation, so I know it's not a matter of need by any means. She's the one that comes & seems to only be there for the freebies. She'll avoid major participation, but when it comes to staying around for clean up (which most seem to bolt after we're finished) she's right there making comments like, "well, seems like we had more than enough, I'll take some of that off your hands." Or at our p-t conferences, we have a catered meal for the staff. We don't need parent volunteer, usually the person who organized the meal & the treasurer will be there. She had her conference for her children then stuck around talking for an hour. When we cleaned up, she offered to take home left over food.
I tried to look at it as though it was the PTO's money that paid for it, but it was none of her direct effort AND TIME that evening that earned her the right to take home the little bit left over. It was our two's time that was spent there that night as well as put in any real work. I feel it was it no place her right to have it reap the awards just because she stayed around only to talk waiting for freebies.

We have a woman who does box tops and other redemption things and she thinks that since she redeems them that she can just spend that money on what ever she wants. We have tried and tried to explain to her that it all goes into one pot and we work from a budget but when something comes up she always says "oh we can just use the money I made from box tops".

The "bad volunteers" in our group are actually our leaders! They are in a clique & you are only welcomed into the PTO if you are hand chosen by them! Don't get me wrong, they do ALOT for our school and mostly by themselves, because they run off most of the help they get. The only people that come to our meetings are the officers & school principal's I am also an officer, despite the way they treat me & am at a point where I need to do something! A PTO should be for all parents, but so many parents have had a bad experience & passed their news around, I can't get any new parents interested in coming to the meetings. I'm open to any suggestions of how to get these people out!