Location: Chicago Foundation For Education
Date: Tuesday, September 3, 2013; 5:45-8:15 pm
I had signed up to volunteer for
this One Brick project, but the scheduled EC Jake asked me if I could take over
for him. I agreed since the only things
I would have to differently was arrive with a clipboard having the sign-in
sheet and name tags, and pick a place for the after party. With the place decided and the paperwork in
my bag, I arrived at the CFE building, where the guard asked me good-naturedly
if I was in trouble since I was headed in the wrong direction at this time of
the evening. I went upstairs to check-in
with Dave, who was the EM, and Julie, the site rep. Once most of the volunteers had assembled,
she gave us a rundown on the Foundations mission and our task for the evening. We
would be stuffing 4 pieces of program materials into an envelope along with a
cover sheet. Once that was done, we were
to seal the envelopes and label them.
Sounded easy enough but as we learned soon...oh boy!
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| The Supplies |
We had plenty of volunteers
tonight and there was more than enough work for us to need that many. What we were struggling with was finding
enough room for everyone. Besides the
main conference room where we had worked the last time, we also took over two
other offices as well as the cubicles outside.
I went over to one of the offices along with 2 other volunteers and no
sooner had we started, when we were joined by the one and only Charles
Paul! Now, Charles Paul is one of the
most entertaining volunteers that I have worked with and I told the others that
they were in for a fun evening. I asked
Charles Paul how his training was progressing for the artic marathon and he
said that it was going to be his first marathon and that too in bitter cold. With this, Charles Paul had established a
launching pad for a rollicking discussion and as much as I would have loved to
stay there, another volunteer had arrived and the room was now getting
crowded. So I moved to another task,
telling everyone that I will be back to listen to the entertainment.
 |
| The Machine |
The envelopes were piling up and
they needed someone to seal them. Julie
joked that it would be by licking and I said the glue would either make someone
extremely happy by the end of the evening; or dead if George Costanza was the
supplier! Fortunately they had a machine
to do the sealing, which rapidly took in a stack of envelopes, sealed them, and
delivered on the other side. Julie
showed me how to use it and I started feeding it some envelopes. I noticed that besides sealing, the envelopes
were also emerging out with postage stamped and I mentioned that to Julie. She said that it should not be that way and that the
machine was in the wrong setting. The
mailing run that CFE uses is either free or subsidized, so by putting stamps on
the envelopes, the machine was costing them money. Fortunately we had caught it early before any
damage was done, though I realized later that the machine would periodically reset
to the stamping mode and so I had to be careful to note what the settings were
before feeding in a fresh stack. The
last thing I wanted to do was end up making a non-profit spend money!
The machine while quite efficient, was also making a lot of noise, something that I had to endure for most of the
next two hours. For all of its speed, people
were making the packets at a rapid rate and so it was relentless in terms of
the amount of envelopes passing through the sealer. I was going into the different rooms to
collect the stacks and once sealed, dropping them off with Dave, who alongside
Julie had started the labeling process.
The group in the main room had music going whereas the other group had
Charles Paul holding court. Once when I
walked in to collect their stack for sealing, I heard him asking them the most interesting
place that they had visited. Next time
it was chatting about everyone’s favorite Michelle Pfeiffer movie. On my next visit I heard them talk about “Zen” and then it was about him learning
French. I asked him if there was an equation
for doing tonight's task in a more efficient way and of course he said that there
was. Whether people were being
enthralled or tolerating him, there was no mistaking that he was the life of
the room.
 |
| The Stacks |
A first time volunteer was
working in one of the cubicles and thus isolated from the groups in the
different rooms. I told her that it wasn’t
always like this and she should definitely consider coming back! Since I was busy carrying stacks upon stacks
of sealed envelopes for labeling – which were now piling up on cabinets – another
volunteer Tony, had joined me in the sealing room to help out. He was also a newcomer and a chef specializing in
French cuisine. Stuffing and sealing
envelopes seemed like a waste of his talents and I told him to look at some of
the cooking projects that One Brick has. Dave and Julie were making a valiant attempt at labeling everything, but
there was no way we were going to finish it this evening. All the envelopes had been stuffed and sealed, and I asked Julie what she would do if she realized after all of this that one
of the key documents had been left out of each of the envelopes! Dave said that for her sanity and my personal safety, I should withdraw
this question and looking at the big stacks, he was right. We left for the night after she had profusely
thanked us for our help, saying that it would have taken their staff hours to
do it without our help. I was proud of
our volunteers who had worked really hard.
Well, at least they had Charles Paul for company. As for me, I think that noise of the machine sealing the envelopes is going to be permanently etched on my brain!
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