One Last Time

For my fourth and final mandatory post, I went back to the Tri-City Volunteer Center, but there seemed to be a surprising lack of volunteers this time. I went with Casey, Patricia, and Angela, and Brooke met us there. When we got there, things seemed really slow at first, and had almost nothing to do. Later, things got more hectic, but we did not do jobs that we would typically do when we volunteered there, like packaging potatoes. We started off cleaning a bit while Casey went to the front desk to help Stephanie. Brooke, Angela and I were busy sweeping and mopping the floors while Patricia was packing lunches for the homeless. After we finished with the sanitary work, we went to work preparing carts to go out to people's cars. Each cart required a loaf of bread, some dairy product, potatoes, lettuce, parsley, and a dessert. Once we received a card with a person's name on it, we would take turns bringing them out to help load the items in the trunks of the cars. Things began to slow down again, so I helped Patricia pack lunches, and was later joined by Angela. While we packed lunches, Patricia told us about the boy she was working with earlier, who was only thirteen years old and already involved in a gang. We continued packing the lunches until closing, but we saw that more people started coming at the last minute and we all decided to stay a little longer to help the workers out. We all kicked it into overdrive to get the orders out as fast as possible so everyone could go home. None of us minded the extra time at all and were actually willing to stay a little longer to help clean up to reduce the work required by the employees. After volunteering there so much, I feel like I would not mind going there to volunteer for extra hours, despite the admittedly boring jobs and sometimes tedious work.