Every animal shelter has a “Barbara;” a person, usually a volunteer, who believes he or she is solely responsible for all of your pet placements. You can have a very successful adoption event and Barbara will come forward to exclaim that he/she was responsible for all of the attendees. For Barbara, it is important that he/she is accredited for each placement.
“Karen” is the source for all of your organization’s false information. He/she has a large social following and he/she uses that following to create animosity within the organization. It is not uncommon for Karen to travel from one organization to another when her motives are realized and he/she is kicked out of one organization after another. It is the Karens of the world that give social media a bad name. It is amazing as to how such a mean person can have so many followers. I have heard some people tell me that on social media, it is safer to be on that person’s good side.
It is not uncommon that you find your Barbara and Karen are the same individual. For whatever reason these people become who they are, you need to realize the role that they play in adversely impacting your organization’s integrity. These are the people who will lie about an animal’s behavior so as to get the animal adopted. You will be amazed to discover the amount of staff time that is necessary to straighten out the misinformation that one person can spew on social media.