Mar
You’re welcome? I guess?
Posted in My life | No Comments »I volunteer pretty regularly, at two popular attractions in DC. I’ve volunteered at one since 2001 and the other since 2009. At one of them, I wear a shirt that say “Volunteer,” but it’s pretty small. And I get a lot of questions that start with “Do you work here?” I’m never sure where the person is going with that, so I usually say, “Well, I volunteer here.” Most people then launch into their question, but more and more, I get people being all, “Oh, you’re a volunteer? Thank you!”
I never know how to respond to that. Usually I say something about how it’s a good outlet for me to blather on about random history topics, because they don’t come up in conversation that much. And then, a lot of the time, the person will say, again, “Thank you!”
This may go into the same category of how I can’t deal with compliments. (Example: Coworker: [Other coworker] and I were just saying how much we like your top! Me: Really? I mean, thank you.) I do spend my time trying to help visitors have great experiences, and hopefully making the lives of the people who DO work there easier. I’m not sure whether something has shifted in our society that I’m getting more thanks from visitors than I used to. I think part of what makes me uncomfortable is that a lot of times, there are staff members in the area, and I see these people as making bigger sacrifices than me. I’m giving up part of a weekend, but a lot of the people who work there don’t make very much money and work long hours there.
So I try to make up for it. Like the time a visitor gave me a gift card to Starbucks; apparently he carries them away just to give away to do-gooders. I gave it to the staff member on duty, who had spent a large chunk of the morning being chewed out by that guy’s wife because we had run out of passes to get into the site. I can pawn upset visitors onto staff; they’re the ones who have to take the brunt of the anger.