All Systems Go!

Back in the summer of last year, I wrote here about some of the delights of being a volunteer.  A lot of water has flowed beneath the proverbial bridge since then. 

[Let me digress for a moment and say that, in this town there are very few bridges.  A railway line passes through the town, under two bridges and over another, and there are a couple of footbridges that cross it too; but there are, I venture to say, no river bridges.  Our tiny stream (it's actually called a brook) is piped beneath all the roads that pass over it.]

Geography apart - historically accurate though the reference might be - many things have changed over the course of nearly six months since I wrote that article.  New faces have come along and most have gone again, but the odd one has stayed.  One or two have drifted off the scene for a variety of reasons and have, happily, made a come-back.

Looking back on my working life, I have rarely worked as part of a team.  That's not to say I haven't worked with other people ... far from it.  But in the sense of a team in which each member either is dependent on the achievements of another, or is capable of replacing another one in the line ... that's not really been me.  I've pretty well had my own task to do within the overall scheme of things, and provided I did it properly, that was all right.  And certainly, when I was working as a courier, it was all solo work: I was given a load, or told where to collect it; I took it to its destination and I came back for more.

I spoke on that earlier occasion about a system working the way it should.  The main work I do now, as a volunteer, is in the 'scanning department'.  Donations are received, and are made available for purchase in one of a number of retail shops, with the proceeds going to help fund the work of our local hospice.  Goods that have been on display for a while, but clearly aren't attracting the attention of shoppers, find their way to the warehouse, where we attempt other ways to turn them into the cash we need.  In the case of my department, we scan books, DVDs, CDs etc. in order to sell them to on-line companies who buy in bulk and then sell on according to the esoteric needs of an individual customer.  I find it easier to work the complete process on my own, but often someone else is asked to 'help me', and it can be a strain to tailor my work to that of another.

It sounds simple, but each firm's website is different and behind the actual work of scanning lies a complete strategy to control - or at least monitor - what's going on, so that income is maximised and volunteers' time is not wasted re-doing something that has already been done.  With people coming and going throughout the week, this is essential.  When I arrived, about a year and a half ago, now, there were a number of scruffy, handwritten sheets of paper pinned to the notice board, containing the basic details of each website.  Each one had a number of changes and crossings out and, a few weeks ago, I was asked if I would type them up tidily so that, once laminated, they could do the job they were meant to.  Once I'd begun, I realised that what these old sheets were saying was no longer how we are working, and what started as a tidying-up exercise turned into the production of a complete set of procedure documents.

The completion of these coincided with the arrival of yet another new volunteer to be shown what we are doing.  His training, coupled with his possession of far more intuition and 'process-awareness' than most who have come - and gone - before, gave the new procedures a live trial and has proved their worth.  After only a few weeks, we are working together as a proper team and it seems that is still the case on the days when he is there and I'm not.

I long ago decided to document the various tasks that need to be completed as I've made my family history discoveries down the years.  Over the time I've been working on it, the records I've been keeping have changed, and some have been replaced completely, so the 'procedure document' has also changed.  A few years ago, I replaced it with a simple check-sheet which has gradually evolved as I've realised the need to track more and more aspects of the task.

You will by now have realised by one comment or another than I live and breathe spreadsheets, either as financial records or simply as a database.  After a disastrous foray with a national offshoot of the Liberal Democrats last autumn, I've now taken on the mantle of membership secretary of my local branch.  A week or two into the new year, I inherited the spreadsheet on which all the key information is kept and from time to time since I've been colour-coding things, and 'automating' it, so that I can easily see when people have overlooked renewing their subscriptions and so on.

I suppose it's just how my mind has been disciplined over the years, but I do find it satisfying to process data in this way, and strange though it might seem to many, it helps me to deal with the very stuff of life itself.

Uh-oh, it's time to kick off the 'shutting down and going to bed' process ... more relaxed news next week, perhaps!