The Fishbowl
Posted on February 27, 2008
Filed Under Anxiety, challenges, volunteerism, inquistions |
If I’m being frank, I’d have to call yesterday an ordeal. And I was hoping that once I began my first day as a volunteer for the non-profit agency that serves the low-income seniors of this community, my life would change forever - there would be new and apparent purpose and a spring in my step. Like Angelina Jolie or Bono, I would bask in the glow of my own self-righteousness. At the very least, I expected that thankful social workers desperately in need of qualified volunteers would kiss my hands and gush with gratitude. Instead, yesterday, I got Ruth with the suspicious stare and legal banter. She had a colleague, Patricia, who sort of played good cop to Ruth’s impersonation of the television strike-team leader, Vic Mackey. Yesterday was an ordeal. 
I arrived for training at ten a.m. and was subjected to a grueling two hour session, a Q and A worthy of any decent cop show. Apparently Ruth has watched way too many episodes of The Shield and has mastered the art of felony arrests and the ensuing sweat room inquisition. Follow me, she ordered. “We’re going to do ‘this’ in the fishbowl.” (The fishbowl is the conference room in the middle of the agency, the one with all the windows, providing every employee a front row seat to Ruth’s imitation of Michael Chiklis. The ‘this’ she was referring to was some sort of initiation ritual which pretty much amounted to Ruth’s sniffing around my person for signs of truancy or ill intention. Welcome to Farmington, CCE. Welcome to The Barn.
The long morning began with the usual probing barb, “So what is it that you do all day when not volunteering to work with the elderly?” She practically growled, What’s a sweetheart like you doing in a dump like this?
Usually I stay far, far away from the topic of my writing as professional enterprise. I prefer to say, in response to queries about the purpose of my existence, “I bake a lot.”
I’d rather perpetuate stereotypes than to endure someone else’s feigned interest in my novel. But there was just something about Ruth that made me feel defensive. I broke my own rule and blurted out, “I’m a writer - I’ve also got two children. So I write all morning and then administer to their needs in the afternoon.”
“Oh, my dream life,” she said, clasping her hands together mockingly. “I’ve always wanted to write a dirty historical romance novel. The kind with the plot you can kind of tweak, change the setting and publish again and again for great profit.”
“I’m sort of working in the genre of literary fiction,” I said.
She laughed, “Content to die in obscurity then?”
She opened the folder on her desk. It was her way of saying, Now that I’ve dashed your quaint hopes, your child-like dreams against the rock of my pessimism, let’s move on to the subject at hand.
“So you’re here because you want to help people, am I right?” She had a habit of answering her own questions, like good police, she was excellent at this rhetorical procedure.
She continued, “I’m going to assume that you’re not the type who would take advantage of anyone. Because I’ve got stories. Everyone’s got a good story. Let me share just one. A few years back there was a volunteer here who helped herself to one of our clients’ saving accounts while she was supposed to be acting as this particular senior’s fiscal representative. When all was said and done she had embezzled $170,000 from this woman who had no one else looking out for her. Of course, we eventually caught wind of what was going on and had the volunteer prosecuted to full extent of the law. She killed herself the day before she was to begin serving a ten year sentence.”
“That’s terrible,” I said. Not sure if I was referring to the theft or the suicide.
“I wasn’t sorry for even a minute,” Ruth said. “She got what she deserved.”
Patricia giggled nervously and added, “Forgiveness is just not her strong suit.”
“I can see that,” I said. “Listen, I’ve got no intention of taking anything from anyone,” I assured them, astonished by my own need to defend my volunteer intentions.
“No, I didn’t think so,” Ruth said. “But everyone’s got a story.
And it went on like that for another grueling 90 minutes of Ruth telling me there are limits to what I can do for these people. She warned me about being too kind, too benevolent.
“A lot of our clients will use you if you let them,” she said. “They’ll milk you dry, have you paying for car repairs and buying laxatives for them. You can’t do that. You’ve got to set limits. You are only to balance their check book, help them pay bills. Nothing else.”
I left the fishbowl feeling rung out, beaten down, like someone had kicked me. But next week I have my first client visit. I’ll go. I’ll see. Maybe I’ll find satisfaction in providing a bit of assistance and some company. Maybe, yet, I can be the quiet warrior bringing joy and some fiscal responsibility to a lonely and grateful person who is just thankful that it is me who visits them instead of Ruth.
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