ah, the folly of organizing volunteers

jackson and i volunteered for my company this morning and while they threw a curve at us and did not let us volunteer together (they randomly separated us which separated children from their parents which was a very bad idea so they god a lot less productivity than they would have had parents not had to stop working to check on their kids and had people who brought friend volunteers been able to enjoy the experience with the friend(s) they brought... the thought, i suppose, was to balance the work groups cuz they were having a contest for who could produce more but overall they got less production... it was especially unfair because they did not stop people from changing groups so one group ended up with twice as many people as when they started and naturally they won... i was with a group that included a kid who did almost nothing and got in the way too much and two people left early so the fact that we produced more than half of what the group that had three times the number of people as us showed we produced more per person, but that wasn't rewarded so the contest idea backfired cuz some people do not want to do it again because they are competitive and the organizers made it a competition... if you are going to make any activity a competition, then make it fair...

it was still fun, even as i was pushing the team i was with to keep up as fast a pace as possible so we didn't talk or joke as much as other teams... being the numbers geek that i am and also the administrator who does not like wasting time, the group waited around for a half hour while the organizers set up snacks and drinks... the work was sorting hand towels for disney... due to the seasonal rush, there are way more towels than the operation can handle, so salaried staff were asked to come in and volunteer and many brought friends or partners or kids... great idea, but poorly organized... anyway, we emptied 11 carts of towels in 17.5 man hours... the "winning" team emptied 19 carts of towels in 54 man hours... that's .629 carts per man-hour while they did .352 carts per man-hour... the stats even get more ridiculous for the winners when we factor in the content of the carts as they were on the side of the room with the in-progress carts, meaning their carts had less than a full load, some just half full... we were on the receiving side of the room so all of our carts were over-the-top filled, 2-3 feet more of towels, so just estimating we did 22 more feet of towels than they did... we won't compare quality, but i think we did a better job of sorting too...

if they let jackson and i work together it would have been fun and fun would have been the focus, but since i was not working with her, the numbers and competition became more of a focus... all in all, we helped a lot but they are still waaaaay behind in keeping up with the carts and while the next scheduled 'volunteer day' is april 12 (jackson's birthday and yes, we have plans), they are gonna need a lot of help a lot sooner than that... good sense would say they should ask, but we shall see if they ask...

home to ponder my navel now... how about you? :)