[matilda] In reply to Gavins email and the Café collectives demands…

[Eric Winnert]

This is really upsetting I don't know how to reply I worked my arse
for you lot and all the thanks I get is "you owe us money!"

The aim of the event was to bring Matilda together to promote it as a
creative centre, the event itself was a large one and I could not have
done it all by my self, I needed the people of Matilda to help me, and
they should as every one at Matilda benefits from the event. And lots
of people did, we all worked our arse off for you lot. There are some
beautiful people there who really made an effort, and there are others
who are just on the take.

My job was to organise the event and make sure every thing went
smoothly, part of that was to allocate jobs to people and collectives.
A week and a half before the event I asked the Café collective if they
would take on full responsibility of the bar, they said yes, so I
trusted them to do the job, had they said no I would have taken a
different route. The reason I asked the café collective was because
they are experienced in the bar, its their stock, they know what to do
with the money collected and they know the blue print for social
events, again had they said No in the first place I would have found
someone else who does have experience with running the bar at Matilda
and asked them. I trusted the café collective and they let me down.

On the evening when people started to arrive the café collective had
failed in its commitment to set up the bar and as you can imagine I
was starting to stress, "an art open night with no refreshments?" that
would have gone in Matildas favour. A member of the café collective
came up to me and said do you need anything from the supermarket? I
said "yes! Drinks!!" She said, "Do you have the money?" I said "no,
because I was told the café collective would sort out the
refreshments", she came back and said "there is a load of beer
upstairs" and I said "I don't know where its is because the café
collective said they would sort it out!"  Mark C went upstairs to get
the alcohol for me.

As to the money, someone sorted a price list, a sign saying donations
and there was a pot. Because the café collective said the would sort
the bar I thought they were being responsible for the monies collected
as well. They know how to run the bar; I don't, that's why I asked
them, to make it easier for everyone. Had they said no I would have
sorted something else out, but they said yes. Can you see a pattern
emerging?

At the end of the evening a member of the café collective wanted to
put the drinks away, I said "what a good idea, shall we put it away
where we got it from?" But I don't know where that is, they said "no
just stick it here in the room at the end of the dinning room that is
being used as a walkway". 5 seconds after we walked out someone walked
in to the room and pulled out the whisky took it to the hack lab in
front the café collective member and started to drink it, saying "yeah
I'll pay a donation, whatever" then this member of the café walked off
knowing full well that the space she put the beer was not secure. But
hey thats my fault right? There was two cases of beer on Thursday
night, when I walked back in to this really carefully chosen space by
the café collective on Sunday, one of the case's had gone. I'm really
fucking surprised the whole lot didn't go!!

In answer to your questions,

a)	What alcohol, and how much, was taken from the store.

Who is responsible for the flow of stock, me? What, I'm responsible
for the all the stock that has been coming in to Matilda for the last
3 months?  There is this very simple thing you can do, its called a
stock take, it works like this: you count all the stock before the
event, then you count the stock after the event, the deficit is what
was used, i.e. if there are 100 cans at the beginning and 60 came back
that means 40 went. I'm sorry to patronize but it really is that
simple, though the hard bit on Matilda's part is to find someone
responsible to do that. I would assume it would be the café collective
in charge of stock takes.

b)	If any money was collected for it, how much, and who has it.

Again I don't know because I assumed the café collective where taking
care of the money because they said they would. There was always
someone by the donation pot taking money, I my self did a stint at the
bar an took about £15, I thought that a member of the café collective
was coming up at regular intervals and taking the money from the pot.
Had they said they didn't want anything to do with the bar, I would
have made other arrangements to secure the money.

The café collective said they would be responsible for the supply of
refreshments and the money collected. So as far as I'm concerned, the
café should have known how much stock they have, and should know
exactly how much money was taken and where it is.

As far as I'm concerned your scape goat-ing me, the café collective
fucked up, by saying they would do a job to help benefit and promote
Matilda and when it came to fulfilling their obligation, they washed
their hands of it and left me in the shit. And because your fuck up
has left Matilda out of pocket your bullying me in to covering the
costs that Ruth lost by dumping the beer in an unsafe place, and not
making sure the money was secured. If she didn't want any part of it
she shouldn't have said yes! But she did and I trusted her. But hey
that's the Matilda way the majority benefit at the individual's
expense.

Eric