[Jon Stratis]

Who are the volunteers you deal with at every competition? Some are mentors. Some are parents. Some are students. Some are friends who were convinced to help out. Some are professionals who work for one of the event sponsors. Some might have no connection to FIRST at all.

When thinking about volunteering for something like this, there is a relatively large amount of turnover. Parents might stop when their kids graduate. Friends might be too busy. Students might move away for college. Mentors and professionals may have lifestyle changes (like having a kid, for example) that prevent them from investing the time. As a result, you always have new volunteers at events. People who have never done this before.

At each event, there is a list of "key volunteers". These are the people that run the whole show. It includes the head ref, the lead robot inspector, the head queuer, pit admin, field reset, and FTA (I may have forgotten one or two, but you get the idea). These individuals have all been volunteering, mentoring, or otherwise been involved with FIRST for many years, and they're the ones that "get it".

If you have a problem with a volunteer, document it as best you can (in other words, write it down!) and find the best person to report the issue to. If your issue is with a robot inspector, talk with the LRI. If its with a ref, talk with the head ref. If you aren't sure who to talk to, go to pit admin OR find the nearest available key volunteer - they'll be able to make sure the complaint is registered with the correct people. Having a written copy of the complaint avoids the "telephone game" and misunderstandings.

Unfortunately, these events tend to be staffed a little light. There simply aren't enough volunteers to have extra's sitting there waiting for a job to do, thus it's incredibly difficult to ask a volunteer to leave halfway through an event. I know robot inspectors often get pulled off to help with other jobs after inspections are done. As an LRI, I can tell you that I would figure out how to appropriately address any complaints about an inspector. Most often, this would involve talking with the inspector to try to get them in the right frame of mind, and then keeping an eye on them for the rest of the event. Anyone who had multiple or serious complaints would either be asked to come back in a role that didn't have the interacting with teams or spectators, or would simply be asked not to come back.

Finally, I'll close with how busy the volunteers (and especially the key volunteers) are. They're all running around the entire time making sure the event runs smoothly. They have a hundred different things that need to be done every hour just to make sure every team gets out on the field for every match. Unfortunately, that means something like this (a bad experience with a safety glasses volunteer) can be a lower priority, especially if the immediate issue has already been "resolved" by getting the individual a pair of safety glasses from another team.