taking it to the bank
i put a few points in the karma bank this weekend when i volunteered for an event to help the City of Hope with its annual fundraising walk. to be honest, i originally signed up for the volunteering as part of the disney "give a day, get a day" program, where you received a ticket for free admission to disneyland for giving a day of service. the joke was on me when disney ran out of their ticket quota 10 weeks in to the year, leaving those of us who signed up for volunteer opportunities any later than mid-march in the uncomfortable position of considering bailing out on a commitment to charity. so i decided to go through with it, even with the daunting task of being there at 6 in the morning.
what a mess. i know that i have quite a bit of experience in event management, so maybe i shouldn't judge. but holy cow, what a cluster this was. i arrived at 6am, per my instructions, to find that my actual volunteer shift didn't start until 7:30. trying to make myself useful for an hour and a half proved to be difficult. it was equally comical and frustrating watching a group of 10 or so volunteers try to also make themselves useful when being tasked with "blow up some balloons". that was an excellent lesson in Volunteer 101... they will do what you tell them... nothing more and nothing less. the coordinator finally came over to clarify that she wanted a few bunches of balloons to tie to the registration tent to get people's attention, and hence started the tense discussions (close to all-out brawling) on appropriate string length and whether 2 balloons should be tied to the same piece of ribbon. really, people? this was something i became an expert in circa MIDDLE SCHOOL.
when it was finally time for me to take my post on the route to encourage and cheer and make sure no one wandered off the route and got lost, it was close to 8. unfamiliar with the area the walk was being held, i asked directions to my post from multiple sources, and i was assured that i would need to be shuttled to my location. i waited in the small parking lot designated for shuttle pick-up... only to be taken to the end of the parking lot and dropped off at my post... about 20 yards from where i got on the shuttle. awesome. i spent the next hour and a half chatting with my partner-on-route, until we saw the first of the walkers come through. and right behind the walkers was a car. turns out that no one thought to shut down traffic through the walk, so there were people blasting through the area at 40 miles per hour. my job quickly morphed in to one of traffic cop, cheerfully yelling at the walkers to stay on the right while trying to direct 2-way traffic on a 1-way lane.
and then it started raining.
eventually the shuttle came to pick us back up, and i was only aware of that when my partner got off the shuttle and asked if i was coming. thanks for the heads-up! i decided enough was enough and checked out by letting the route coordinator know what a mess the route was. i felt no obligation to stay and clean up... i probably would have been there all day.
part of me feels like volunteering next year in the position of either event coordinator, or at the very least, volunteer coordinator. i know i could do it better. the other part of me says sleeping in on a saturday morning is a treat i earn all week. incentive or no, totally not worth the experience.
current mood: what a mess!