Life as a school mum is peppered with call-outs for volunteers. And
when it comes to volunteering, there are those who do and those who
don't. If I'm going to be honest, my instinct is to be in the latter
category. But I have tried, with varying degrees of success.
Each time I tried (and each time things went pear-shaped ... again) I
learned something new: about myself, about the art of volunteering.
Here are my five most formative volunteering experiences and what I learned from each one.
1. The white elephant stall
The first time I volunteered I didn't actually volunteer. My friend
Antonia volunteered on my behalf. She had gone to the P&C meeting
to see what she could do to help with the school fete. When they asked
who would do the white elephant stall, she shot up her hand and
volunteered both our names.
Her thinking was: we both like second hand shops, so who better to run one?
It was a nice idea in theory and I was keen to start stock-taking
awesome bric a brac. I even went to the newsagent and bought some cute
little price tag thingies with string so that we might attach them to
all the quirky treasures that surely would inhabit our picture-perfect
white elephant stall.
I imagined us sitting on stools, in big straw hats, chatting away
sipping coffee, while people "oohed" and "aahed" over our gorgeous
second-hand wares. We would be quite the curators, I imagined.
However, we had not counted on two things:
a) Sorting, pricing and storing the contents of a white elephant stall takes top notch big-picture organisational skills.
b) When you say this:
Please donate to the white elephant stall
Most people hear this:
Please dump your worthless rubbish in the school hall: free council clean up!
We got bits of wood and wire, broken mugs, bags of old shoes that not
even a hobo would want for free, mismatching wine glasses, ice bucket
holders (sans ice buckets) mouldy clothing including underwear and lots
and lots of foot spas. More foot spas than was humanly decent.
Faced with this mountain of detritus, we soon realised we did not have
the required skills to deal with it. Adding to the problem was the fact
that it was taking up considerable space in the school hall and the
music master was not happy about it.
There followed various inept attempts to move our "stock" somewhere
else, none of which came to fruition and the first hint that we were not
equipped for this task.
Next we set about "organising it." I did
random unhelpful things like write prices on things with an indelible
black marker pen while Antonia spent an inordinate amount of time
talking to herself while sorting and grouping things in to price
points. Only to realise she couldn't keep track because meanwhile I was
moving things around and writing on them with a black marker pen.
In short, we were both indians and we needed a chief.
So far, not so good.
The day of the fete we set up our stall
and everything was going fine: until 2pm when we realised that if we
didn't start a fire sale like, RIGHT NOW we would again be stuck with
mountains of junk to deal with after the fete finished. And given our
track record, the school hall would not be offered as a "storage"
option.
This stuff would be coming home with us if we didn't start getting rid of it.
We started spruiking like a pair of pros.
"Everything $2!"
"Everything must go!"
"FREE foot spa!"
This
was precisely when the head of the P&C witnessed me selling off her
"priceless" and lovingly donated gold-rimmed wine glass set (of five,
yes five) for the fire sale amount of $2. (Truth be told, I was about
to GIVE them away.)
Honestly, I thought she was going to send me
to detention. She rushed over, snatched them back and told me they were
"worth much more than $2 thank you very much!"
At the end of the
day, still sitting on our mound of rubbish we were mercifully bailed out
by a fast-thinking school dad who organised for Vinnies to come and
pick up our remaining unsold "stock".
Lesson: If you are an indian, do not apply to be a chief.
2. The cake stall
My next foray into volunteering was to heed a simple but plaintive school newsletter call out:
Cake stall helpers required. Please call Julie on 9724 5566
I
called the phone number, as required, and was slightly disappointed
when I was not greeted with gushing declarations of thanks for
volunteering my "helper" services. In fact, Julie seemed completely
disinterested in having heard from me. I'm pretty sure I heard her yawn
in my ear as I explained why I was calling.
"Just come to the senior staff room at 2pm on Tuesday." She said wearily.
I
turned up with my best helper apron on. In my mind, I was imagining a
fun communal vibe as all the helpers laid out cakes, gossiped and became
lifelong friends.
I stood at the door of the staff room looking
for Julie. Then I spotted a bored-looking woman standing over a table
full of cakes quickly put two and two together.
"Julie? I'm Penny, we spoke on the phone."
"Take this cake and put it on the table outside." She said, simply.
I
did that and wandered back inside, keen to do some more "helping." I
saw about 10 other "helpers" being directed by Julie to take one cake
each out to the table. No one was having much fun. No one was bonding,
and apparently no one was really needed. It seemed Julie was just
humouring us all and allowing us to help her because she assumed we had
such empty lives we had nothing better to do than ferry cakes one at a
time from one table to another.
After the cakes were set out on
the table we all stood in awkward silence and waited for further
instructions from our Dear Leader. Julie just went about her business
setting prices on the cakes, sorting out her float money and pretending
the rest of us didn't exist.
In light of my expectations, the stiff silence and the lack of bonhomie was tragic.
After
about 10 minutes of pretending it was normal to stand in an empty
school playground with an apron on doing absolutely nothing I decided to
make like a banana and split. I never saw Julie again and I vowed never
to volunteer for anything with her name attached. Which pretty much
cancelled me out of most volunteering activities at the school because
Julie, in spite of her chronic lack of leadership skills, was the Big
Cheese of volunteering.
Lesson: Don't expect to make friends or be thanked.
3. Canteen duty
After
ascertaining that P&C people didn't actually want the amateurs
amongst us messing with their work, I decided to volunteer for a
different department: the canteen. Apparently they actually
were desperate for helpers and added to that, I have done enough time in
cafes and pubs to know how to put together a mean salad sandwich and
count back change out of a five.
It was a promising beginning. The
canteen coordinator was a lovely 50-ish woman who practically cried
with thanks when I turned up. So far so good. Gratitude: tick. She was
also a very good delegator and gave me a big list of tasks to complete
before the recess bell sounded. Apparently I was the best helper she'd
ever had and she kept telling me so. I was having the greatest day
ever.
Things went a bit pear-shaped however when I apparently did
not properly police the two queues at the canteen window: one queue was
for junior school kids and the other queue was for senior school kids.
There was also a yellow line behind which they had to stand, UNLESS it
was their turn, at which point they were allowed to step forward and
state their business.
One particularly beguiling little girl kept
turning up in the markedly shorter junior school queue. She would smile
at me like the cat that got the cream and buy another chicken chilli
tender before thanking me in a most charming way. I thought she was just
taken with me, because I was so welcoming and motherly.
"She's not a junior!" A kid yelled at me. "You're supposed to tell her to get in the other queue!"
Pretty soon there was an angry mob of kids at the window demanding to
know why I had let someone rort the system. Apparently this was a
serious offence and "she does it all the time!" But I refused to be
drawn into their petty dibby-dobbing mostly because I did not want to
admit to myself that I had been "had."
"Queue, schmew!" I shouted finally over the dibby-dobbing rabble.
Which was when the orderly two-queue recess rush became a disorderly "everybody bunch at the window" free-for-all.
When
my friendly canteen coordinator returned from the cool room to see the
chaos I had unleashed she shouldered me out of the way and started
shouting instructions about two orderly queues and staying behind the
yellow line.
Some weeks later, the school-run not-for-profit
canteen system went under and the canteen contract was put out to
tender. I'm not saying my little 'queue schmew' stunt was the cause, but
I have a feeling my amateur antics were the final nail in the coffin.
Lesson: Just because there's no pay, doesn't mean there are no rules.
4. Parent band
By
this stage, I was extremely reluctant to stick my head up ever again.
But just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in.
One
morning, I was minding my own business at the local coffee shop when two
of my favourite school mums (a particularly rebellious pair who had
recently infiltrated the P&C and started wreaking havoc amongst the
straight-laced Julies of the world) snuck up behind me and said:
"Ah-ha! Just the person we've been looking for!"
They
had a proposition for me. Would I put together a parent band to
perform on the day of the school centenary fete? (Important sidebar: in
another life, I was a relatively successful indie musician.)
My
mission, if I chose to accept it, was to hand pick my own cracking hot
band out of available parents and play a few awesome tunes to impress
the dignitaries and politicians who would be walking through the school
on the day.
"Your call, you do what you want, you're in charge. Just make it good." Said Agent 1.
They also had "intel" A video of the previous parent band which they played to me on their i-phone.
"See this?" Said Agent 2. "This is what we
don't want."
It
was a bunch of parents having a really fun time making a very awful
noise with drums, Casio keyboard, flute and tambourine. Apparently it
was their version of
House of the Rising Sun. It wasn't any version I'd ever heard, let's just put it that way.
And
once again, flattery made a fool of me. But in my defence this task
was right in my comfort zone and the one area in life where I am
actually comfortable taking on the role of leader.
What could possibly go wrong?
I accepted the challenge, imagining myself as a veritable Jack Black in
School of Rock. I could whip these parents into shape and show them how to ... pop-rock-with-a-country-twist. How hard could it be?
What
I did not foresee was all the previous 'parent band' members, the
have-a-go funsters, assuming they would be included. I decided to give
them enough rope to hang themselves. With my core musicians already in
place ( a terrific bunch of naturally talented hobby players who were
prepared to let me lead) we invited the others to come to rehearsal and
show us what they had.
They came, they sang, they stank up the
rehearsal room and remained completely obvlivious to the fact that they
were creating a stench of mammoth, "Oh my god why would you want to do
that in public?" proportions.
I remembered then that complete lack of talent always comes hand in hand with a complete lack of self-awareness.
Added
to that, they expected the rest of us - the ones with the actual
musical ability -to simply back them like a karaoke band. They came with
all manner of ridiculous song suggestions, no charts (musical notation
that might have helped us do their bidding) and the expectation that we
would stand in the background spontaneously playing whatever song came
into their head at the time.
After rehearsal I went home and sent
an email to Agents 1 and 2, tendering my resignation as "band leader." I
couldn't deal with these nutcases and nor was I prepared to:
a) perform in public with them
b) be the one to tell them their services were not needed
As
a last-ditch compromise, I suggested we allot them one song each in the
hour-long set; but they were to bring charts to the next rehearsal and
there would be no,
House of the Rising Sun or
Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend.
Agent
1 was having none of it. True to her cat-amongst-the-pigeons form she
fired off a group email informing everyone bluntly and with no
apology, who was "in" and who was "out."
Then as a final "so there" she effectively signed my death warrant:
"Penny is in charge, what she says goes!"
Fun times in the playground after that, as I became, "The diva who kicked everyone out of the parent band."
But
the show did go on. And in case you're wondering, my hand-picked
musical cohorts and I rocked the weather shed on the day of the
centenary celebrations. We rocked it like ... a bunch of 40-something
parents playing some very acceptable country pop rock.
However, a
lot of people still hate me and I can no longer enter the school
playground for fear of having a "Kick me I'm a diva" sign taped to my
back.
Lesson: Don't get involved, no matter what the circumstances. Just don't get involved. Ever.
5. The scone and coffee stall
But
take heart, these tales of volunteering horror do have a happy ending.
When my eldest child started high school I took advantage of the "clean
slate" and decided to give this volunteering thing one last go. Going
with my adage of sticking to my skill set, I put my name down for the
"coffee stand" at the annual school open day.
Soon after
volunteering my services, a very organised and efficient email arrived
in my inbox: I was allotted a one hour shift on the day and told where
to show up including a very helpful map of the school attachment.
I
turned up to find a well-oiled machine going on in the school's home
ec. kitchen. Students with chef's hats on were pumping out trays of
perfect scones one after the other. Another set of students were then
jamming and creaming them. And yet another two were manning the espresso
machine in a most professional and efficient manner.
My instructions were simple: take orders, deliver orders to tables. I could do that. And I did.
Clearly, someone "big-picture smart" was in charge; all I had to do was
follow instructions. It was busy and fun and I even made some friends.
Lesson: It's a numbers game. One out of five ain't bad.
