Tuesday, April 30, 2024
My friend, Carla, and I signed up to be volunteers for the Doors Open thing in May. We are required to go to a volunteer training and chose the one at the American Swedish Institute, because neither of us has ever been there. The training was at 6, but the ASI stayed open until 6 for anyone who wanted to come early to see the attached Turnblad Mansion. We wanted to. We spent an hour looking around the beautiful mansion. It was built from 1904-1908. It is very grand yet appeared to be very livable. We agreed that we could easily make ourselves comfortable, if anyone wanted to give it to us.
We wondered how they would fill 90 minutes with volunteer training. Isn’t it just show up on time, greet and count people, smile and be friendly? Oh, and point to the door.
Well, yes, yes, it is that. But we did spend 90 minutes.
We thought maybe they filled up all the time (partially by reading us the slides they showed, that they are going to email us as well) (and then repeating the stuff that they just read, and then repeating it again in 5 minutes) so we would feel like we had value for driving into the city. We got T-shirts to wear to the event, so it made sense for us to come to them even just to get the shirts. The information could easily have been done in less than 30 minutes. Carla and I couldn’t sit next to each other, because they had exactly the number of chairs as people registered, so there were not two chairs together when we got there. No harm, because we wouldn’t have been talking during the thing anyway – although I did think I could scroll through my phone like a high school kid while the guy was reading, and talking, and repeating. I didn’t.
We haven’t gotten our assignment yet, because we said we would happily go anywhere. It’s going to be fun!
