Volunteers Needed

 It all started when my wife came home from work one evening saying there was a clicking noise in her vehicle. I hopped in and backed up maybe ten feet out of the garage and knew what was making the noise. I knew this because I noticed that air pressure indicator was illuminated on the dash and the clicking occurred once every revolution of the tire. I quickly confirmed there was a screw head protruding from her tire and can't believe she drove all the way home on it. But fortunately, the sidewalls were pretty stiff and her vehicle is light and so nothing was damaged. 

The next day I dropped off the vehicle to get the tire fixed new tires put on all the way around since those tires were near the end of their life expectancy anyway. While that was happening, I walked across the street to a little coffee shot intending to read my book there for awhile until the work was completed. Instead I ran into a neighbor (and friend) who was meeting up there with someone else for breakfast before they were going to haul some books over to the local convention center and sort for an upcoming book fair. In quick order, I was asked and volunteered to help out in the sorting. 

Now three weeks later, the event is upon us and they again needed help hauling some 1600 boxes of books from the top floor of the convention center to the ground floor where an army of ladies were there arranging them on tables stretching nearly 100 feet long. I wasn't busy that particular day and so again, volunteered to help cart down boxes of books but it wasn't without its moments.

1. One of the other male volunteers, one of about eight, had such bad body odor, that the first time I ended up riding down the elevator with him, my eyes were watering. Another time he got off the elevator as I was entering to go back for another load, and the odor was so strong in the elevator I started gagging. After that, I did everything I could to time my loads so I wasn't anywhere near him. 

2. One elderly gentleman helping to cart down books took so long to exit the elevator, (the door would only remain open for maybe 10 seconds before closing) that it would close and go up to the top floor before he could get far enough out of the way for someone to press the button again. Whenever he made a trip up or down the elevator, it created a que of people behind him because of the missed opportunity and it would take another 2 or 3 cycles to get caught back up.

3. On my first trip, one helpful lady told me to put the boxes of books on top of the tables in the appropriate section so that the sorters could just pull books out and organize them without having to lift the heavy books. For two hours this method worked well. Then a late comer showed up and chastised me for putting the boxes of books on the table because they had to lift them off the table to make room for them and then lift them back onto the table again. It created twice as much work. I thought about going into the finer points of physics and elevation changes of weight and that she was tripling the amount of work needed to get the books from point A to point B but bit my tongue. 

4. One of the other cart operating volunteers insisted on stacking his cart with huge loads of boxes full of books and then parking it in front of the elevator doors waiting for the doors to open. Inevitably, there was always someone coming up from the ground floor with an empty cart to get another load who would find that when the doors open, their way was blocked. Every single time the first man with the overloaded cart would struggle to back his cart up far enough to allow the others to get out of the elevator and then couldn't get his cart back into the elevator before the doors closed. Thus would follow a minute or more of him jumping back and forth trying to keep the doors open while heaving his overloaded cart into the elevator. This too backed up other carts on both ends of the elevator travel. I also could average two trips to every one of his by not overfilling the cart and thus out carry him with a much smaller cart. 

5. The elevator has a sensor issue on the outer door on the ground floor. For some reason, 50% of the time the outer door wouldn't slide shut all the way, thus tripping the sensor and allowing the elevator to ascend to the top floor. It could be solved as long as those on the ground floor just applied a little pressure to the door to help it close all the way. But after the umpteenth time of having to take the stairs down to the first floor, nudge the outer door shut so that I could push the button, ride the elevator up to the top floor to retrieve my full cart and ride it back down to the ground floor again, only to remember to nudge the outer door shut so the person following me wouldn't have the same issue, I had enough and made some excuse so I could go home and leave the volunteering to others with more patience than I have.