As a volunteer one is invited into a unique workplace. If you think about it, every workplace is totally unique. They may have similar characteristics; computers, fork-lifts or whatever, but their human make-up is unique. I should know, I’ve had over forty jobs in my adult life, everything from a bookie’s board-marker to a university lecturer.
A volunteer is different from a paid worker in that everyone
is duty-bound to be nice to you. You’re not just another drone working for a
wage, you are somehow this pious individual offering services for free, and,
even though they may despise you for this in their hearts and minds, they must
act towards you as if you are a visiting holy man with their ‘thank you ever so
much for doing that’ and ‘can I get you a tea?’.
So it is with me at the Scottish Poetry Library. Apart, that
is, from the gaslighting.
Ok, I’m joking about the gaslighting but there is something
oddly disconcerting going on in that I am continually misunderstood, misinterpreted,
misconstrued by the heid-honcho there, an amiably intense individual that we
shall refer to as Meester X. Take yesterday as an example of this.
I’m spraffing with the librarian, a jolly, faux-curmudgeon
named Jenny. I’m saying to her what will I do if I venture down to London by
train to visit my 82-year old mother and I have a positive LFT before getting
to her place of residence..
“Ah mean I cannae just get back on a train back to Scotland
like that SNP wummin..”
Meester X only catches the last bit as he emerges from his
room.
“I heard that about ‘that SNP woman’. She’s the leader of
our nation,” he half-quips
“I didn’t mean that one..,” but by this time he has sped to
another part of the building.
So now I’m anti-Nicola, anti-SNP, anti-independence. anti-Scottish
when in fact I’m not necessarily any of those things and I was referring to the
MP who’d travelled back from Westminster even though she’d tested positive for
Covid.
These occurrences have been going on for some time. I was
volunteering at an event (the announcing of the new Makar?). There was all sort
of media there and invited guests and I was handing out drinks when Meester X
comes bounding up..
“Are you Kathleen’s man?”
I’d been volunteer at the library for three years and I have
no idea who Kathleen is far less was I married to her.
“No, Meester X. I am a volunteer here”
He eyes me suspiciously as if really I am ‘Kathleen’s man’
and what are my motives for denying this fact.
Also, he thinks I’m soft in the head.
One morning and bang on my starting time at ten I cannot
gain entrance as the glass door is still locked. I peer in looking for a staff
member to let me in. Meester X spies me and starts making demonstrative motions
with his hands. While I am trying to interpret these he loses patience and
comes to open the door.
“Why don’t you just press the buzzer?”
There’s nothing I can do but appear oafish to Meester X. If I was ever surreptitiously scratching my groin you can be sure it will be witnessed by a head-shaking Meester X.
I try to ingratiate myself by engaging him on his hometown
of Dundee. I tell him how impressed I was by the view from Dundee Law and how I
was previously unaware of the existence of this lofty peak.
“How could you miss a thing like that right in the centre of
the city?” he replies, barely concealing his derision.
I’m used to be thought of as a reasonably intelligent
individual with a ready and wry wit but to Meester X I am a somewhat doltish figure
who pretends not to be married to Kathleen, whoever she is. I am ‘a volunteer’
but maybe one who has been assigned to the place, perhaps by a mental health
agency.
Volunteer in the community?
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