Reception is fairly quiet right now. Every once in a while there is a crisis of some sort or another which keeps me busy for a few minutes. Then everything will settle down and there is nothing to do. I suppose I could ask Andy for some work to do, but it would probably be mindless work which would bore me out of my mind. Right now I would rather spend my time writing. I still have four more hours in reception, plenty of time to continue telling about what happened this month.
On November 7th all of us who were doing Level 2 training had a day off so Blum, Benjamin, Pati, Chiara and I took a taxi with Nancy to Chingford Station. It was sad to say goodbye but we made her promise to come visit us often. Allan gloated to Gustavo before we left because Nancy leaving meant the number of Ecuadorians was now even with the number of Brazilians, an important fact apparently.
After we left Nancy at the station we took the bus to Walthamstow to fix Chiara's phone and look around the shops. Really the only good thing about Walthamstow is the 99p shop, it's amazing, and also terrifying. Blum and I bought a small cake, it tasted pretty good and we didn't die, so that was good. In general though Walthamstow is quite shabby, and doesn't feel like an incredibly safe place to be by oneself.
The next day was back to Level 2 training, we did Aerial Trek rescues all day which was tiring. Things started to go wrong when I got an email from my Dad at lunch. Poor Ty, our chocolate lab, has been diagnosed with bone cancer. It was awful to realize he will not be there with his tail spinning to greet me when I come home in August.
I thought the day could not get much worse until we stopped for an afternoon break. We went back in Den to find everyone angry and upset. We were informed that Rodrigo, Nicholas and Seth were being sent home, fired essentially. I will not go into the reason for this, but the bottom line was that we thought that being sent home was an unduly harsh punishment for something which was, in our view, an honest mistake. We were so determined to do something that everyone, including the volunteers who had the day off, showed up for the morning meeting the next day to demand that the leads and manager talk to us about it. They did so, though obviously not willingly. We did our best to keep it civil but emotions ran high on both sides. I could understand where the managers were coming from, even if I did not want to, but I still did not think the boys, knowing them as all of us volunteers know them, deserved to go home for what they did. Nothing came of the talking though and we all left just as, if not more, upset.
The interesting things that once everyone was feeling none too happy with the leads, and indeed the Scout Association in general, suddenly all the little problems that we had laughed about and put up with seemed to be major problems. Which was why we asked to have another meeting to address those issues which we did the following Tuesday. We re-negotiated how much food money we received and which meals would be eaten in the restaurant because the current situation at the time was leaving us hungry sometimes. Then we started listing all of the problems in the Den: broken curtain rods, broken kitchen floor, a useless extractor fan, a hole in the living room wall, the fact that we only have one dryer that works, our couch without working springs, the twelve mice that we caught in two days.
I think the leads and managers were eager to say yes to our requests after the last stand off and by the end of the day we had new doormats, frying pans and mouse poison down. Some of the other problems have been fixed but we still only have one working dryer and now we are down to two washing machines between nineteen people.
Needless to say we were still upset up the boys being fired, we still are somewhat though now we have accepted it. It has ruined some peoples' opinions of some of the bosses. It has led some volunteers to believe there is a bit of a double standard because we know of past volunteers who did things just as bad if not worse and did not get fired. At this point I just feel sad that it all had to happen at all. I feel so badly for the boys, they were all so happy to be here and it seems like such a waste to send such good volunteers home. Allan, Gustavo and I drove Rodrigo to the airport this past Friday which was really sad, I am really going to miss him. The other two boys are still here, I think they are looking for other placements.
At the end of it all I realize that this is just one of those hard life lessons that serves to remind me that things are not always fair and that sometimes perception has more of an impact than the truth. The only good thing to come out of this hard week was that we came together as a team to support the boys and we stood up for what we thought was right. We felt like more of a family than ever.
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