The Story of Today

I went over to Freeman and got registered to be a volunteer, which is just a matter of (very briefly) finding out if you have any skills and finding a place to send you. I picked KellyUSA building 1536. I could have gone to another shelter, but I have heard that they have some of the biggest warehouses in the world out there and wanted to see. What I heard was right. Imagine 5 Super Wal-Marts end to end and connected. That's how big 1536 is. Gargantuan is an understatement.

Here's my name tag:


When I first arrived, a nice young lady checked me in and asked me what I wanted to do. I said "I dunno" and so she said, "Wanna do this?" (meaning check people in, not thiiiiisss, hehe). So she gave me a 5 minute training on how to check people in, and then left. I proceeded to kind of do it my own way anyway. I was getting the job done, but I wasn't really enjoying it. I work on computers all day and play on them all night. So, after an hour or so, I got out of that. What I really wanted to do (even before I arrived I thought of this) was to help serve food. So, I went over to the service area and asked to be put to work. Boy did they!!! I moved stuff around and helped organize for the after-lunch snack tables. I got in a work group with 3 or 4 ladies. 1 of them was Annette Ramos, who I had gone to college with, even thought I didn't know her very well then. I served canned peaches with her for about 5 hours until dinner and talked a lot with her. Now, that's a lot of peaches!!! I have been saying that we went through at least 500 gallons of peaches, and I'm not sure if that's a big enough number. It was fun though. Then we get set for dinner. Dinner was Chili Mac, Green Beans, Rolls, and fruit. I was going to count plates with one of those neat little finger clickers, but I got an even better job. In this building, they had tons of that Purell Hand sanitizer gel and they needed someone to make sure that everyone that came thru the line got a squirt of it. I really had a good time with that! I was all chatting and joking with people - "Squirt for your health; Salud!" - Have a little squirt; keep the germs away" - "How about a little squirt for the little squirt?" (for the lil kids) - "Here's a squirt; we want to keep you healthy." I used up my quota of the word squirt for this life, I think. Haha. I was also telling them things like "I hope you have a good meal tonite" and "We're gonna take care of ya'll" - just general good Texas friendly type things. I only had about 8 people refuse a little squirt. I tried not to take no for an answer. That was good and I bet I disinfected about 2500 people.

After that, I connected up with Adam, the shelter manager. He snagged me to do a count of people that needed to go back to Beaumont, which I and an SAPD detective did. It was 440 by the way. Lots of Beaumonters in the shelter. I sat in on a meeting with him, even though I probably shouldn't have, and about 5 of us talked about the counts. They did other cities at the same time as I did Beaumont. Anyway, one of the things that came up was that he wanted to set up a table for Transportation Info. I jumped in and said I'd do it. I was looking for a new job by now (being thoroughly tired of peaches...) and he said "OK." We talked about what we needed and I said that I'd take care of it. With a little info about what he wanted, I went about making it happen.

Aha, at this point I just remembered the thing about the lady that wanted to beat me up. She was in the line to be counted for B-mont, and when I couldn't answer he questions about when they were going home, she got belligerent. Forgive me, but fuck her! She was all chewing me out when she should be thankful that Red Cross gave a damn about getting her lousy ass out of Beaumont! Okay, sorry about that. But anyway, she wanted to chew me out instead of being thankful for the free food and shelter and everything that Red Cross had given her. Finally, after a minute or two of verbal punishment from this bitch, I just interrupted her and said, "I can't talk to you anymore" and I walked away. It's a good think that two police officers closed in and gave her a talking to or I think she might have followed and given me a slap like those penguins out of the Madagascar movie (that was really good, BTW. I highly recommend it)

So, back to the Transportation Desk. I knew that it would take a lot of printing, so I decided that I'd get all my stuff together and just go to my office. It's about 1:30am by now, but that's OK. So, I was just getting ready to do one final check with Adam when some big guy in a pink shirt stopped me from going in the office I'd been going in for the past 3 hours to do stuff (the Red Cross office). I found out that he was Craig and that he was a new shelter manager that had just come on shift. He asked me a lot of questions and ended with "How long have you been here?" "since noon-thirty" was not a good answer, but it was true and it was the one I gave. He said"Go home" flat out and wouldn't listen to anything I had to say which pissed me off. So, I went to find Adam and just left. I told Adam that I wanted to get the fliers back into the building so that they'd be ready first thing in the morning. He made arrangements for me to get another guy to come out to my car and get them so Craig-jerk wouldn't see me back on the premises after having told me to leave. And an hour and a half or so later, they guy did come out and get them. I was happy everything was ready for the Transportation Desk - my Red Cross baby - to be born. Then I went home and crashed...