Terrible Volunteer Experience

[Gray Adams]

Originally Posted by JosephC

I remember receiving a free pair of Andy Mark safety glasses at Worlds. Although for the life of me i can't remember how I got them, or where I got them.

I couldn't find them, though I didn't look very carefully.

[Andrew Y.]

i had an issue with one of the safety Judges...


One of my students was standing on a 2ft crate so I was holding the crate and standing next to him just in case he fell. A safety judge walked up and said "if your going to be an idiot and do something stupid, back him up" and grabbed my arm and placed it on my students underwear and made me grab it...

needless to say it was an awkward moment and I removed my hands which didn't go over well with him...and it ended up with him walking away shaking his head. I understand safety, but I dont need to be putting my hands there

[ratdude747]

Originally Posted by Andrew Y.

i had an issue with one of the safety Judges...


One of my students was standing on a 2ft crate so I was holding the crate and standing next to him just in case he fell. A safety judge walked up and said "if your going to be an idiot and do something stupid, back him up" and grabbed my arm and placed it on my students underwear and made me grab it...

needless to say it was an awkward moment and I removed my hands which didn't go over well with him...and it ended up with him walking away shaking his head. I understand safety, but I dont need to be putting my hands there

Whoa!

You'd think judges and volunteers would have more common sense than this... most do, but this sort of behavior IMHO is unacceptable. This kind of crap is NOT what FIRST is about.


On a side note, from what I have been reading the past few days it seems like there was a higher level of hostility at champs this year... cursing volunteers, sketch-touch safety judges, and even fistfights over scouting seats... If it weren't for what I have seen elsewhere I'd say FIRST's GP level is slowly slipping.

Bottom line: People, if you aren't already, USE COMMON SENSE!. It matters.

[RoboMom]

Originally Posted by Tanis

Though I won't say that the volunteer acted appropriately on any level, I will say this-

FIRST cannot really screen for this type of thing. They do ask for references when a volunteer signs up in VIMS, and they do have the right to refuse to allow someone to volunteer if there are complaints, but they cannot give interviews or re-screen every volunteer every year. That would be a herculean task.

Second, as Libby informed the OP, there are appropriate channels to address these concerns. Any of the light blue shirted people at champs are the volunteer coordinators (at regionals, not sure of their champs title), and can assist you. If you can't find one of them, the pit admin staff should be more than willing to help.

I have seen one or two volunteers who act inappropriately, whether it is because they are just having a bad day, or whether they simply don't respect a certain person for some reason. The volunteer coordinators are always just as disappointed with these situations as you are, and will most certainly sit down with the volunteer to discuss the situation.

Great advice.
There were HUNDREDS of volunteers at the Championship who worked hard and did a good job. Each team member probably came in contact with at least 100 volunteers in the course of their time at the Championship.

At any FIRST event, the way to deal with a volunteer who is acting inappropriately is to contact the volunteer coordinator. There is a chain of command for dealing with issues. You can locate the volunteer coordinator assigned (usually only one at a regional, but numerous ones divided by area at the Championship) by starting at pit admin.

98% of the event volunteers, if properly trained, do a great job. There will always be exceptions because dealing with people can be messy. They come in with various baggage including not understanding what the job actually is, or could just be having a really bad day. Sometimes people want to volunteer, but they are not right for the job they are assigned. Sometimes volunteers are reassigned to a job they would prefer not to be doing.

[IKE]

It is unfortunate whenever you have a bad experience with a volunteer, but it is a life experience none the less. It is hard to say why the volunteer reacted the way they did. She may have had a bad day. She may have been a parent expecting to get a field reset job and instead was sent to be on safety glasses patrol.

At the Volunteer coordination meeting right before things opened up, they reminded us that have volunteered before to be as cheerful and positive as possible. They also reminded us that many of the volunteers may have never volunteered before, and to try to keep an eye out for this sort of stuff.

I personally would hate to be the safety glasses person. Not because I think handing out glasses is boring, but because of the thousands of people coming through the door, many do not have glasses with them. A fair amount of those people like to argue about the necessity of "needing" safety glasses.

My guess is this particular volunteer had a very strict view on who was to receive safety glasses. This coupled with a few arguments on the need likely lead her to be more abrasive than desired.

You did the right thing by reporting the volunteer. On the outside, we can only guess if/or what action was taken.

The brain is an interesting thing. Often conflict will inact a fight or flight portion of your brain that can lead to irrational behaviour. Some folks are more prone than others to have this area tripped. Being the "Safety Glass Police" likely encounters a lot of conflicts/stress and she was probably in that state of mind most of the day. Learning how to recognize when you or someone else is in this state of mind and how to counteract it is a great skill to master. As a mentor you will encounter many many many more situations similar to this, and your ability to deal with these situations will be a role model for your students.
I know when I get that way, my face will get warm and red. It doesn't happen often, but still more than I would like. You might have some sensitivity over the "real mentor" comment (which is a pretty rough comment), and may have been more argumentative than you realize. That doesn't excuse the other persons behaviour, but I hope it might explain it a bit.

[Chris Hibner]

Originally Posted by Andrew Y.

i had an issue with one of the safety Judges...


One of my students was standing on a 2ft crate so I was holding the crate and standing next to him just in case he fell. A safety judge walked up and said "if your going to be an idiot and do something stupid, back him up" and grabbed my arm and placed it on my students underwear and made me grab it...

needless to say it was an awkward moment and I removed my hands which didn't go over well with him...and it ended up with him walking away shaking his head. I understand safety, but I dont need to be putting my hands there

Wow, you passed up a chance to hand out a major wedgie, and you could have even said it was in the name of safety! You're a bigger man than me.

[Andy Baker]

Originally Posted by Gray Adams

Someone should just start putting sponsor logos all over them and hand them out. They already do this with water bottles that nobody wants (so many Platt bottles at SVR...), so why not with safety glasses that everyone needs and wants?

Originally Posted by JosephC

I remember receiving a free pair of Andy Mark safety glasses at Worlds. Although for the life of me i can't remember how I got them, or where I got them.

Yep, we gave out 1500 AndyMark safety glasses at the Championships. We will do this again next year. How we distribute them may or may not change, but this year we handed them out at our booth.

I agree that the volunteers are instructed to act certain ways, be cheerful, and abide by GP. I was a volunteer inspector on Wednesday and Thursday, and we were told how to act and inspect very clearly. I trust that other areas (safety glasses hander-outers, etc.) were well informed how to act. This volunteer should have been asked to leave her duties.

Maybe Volunteer Coordinators can hand pick a few undercover auditors who do things that have historically raise the ire of these over-zealous volunteers to see how things are handled. In this case, it would be good to have an auditor try to enter different doors into the pits without safety glasses and then see how they are addressed if they give similar excuses for not having glasses as said in this thread. Heck, since we are giving out a few thousand dollars worth of safety glasses, I might try this myself (hide safety glasses, hide name badge, see what happens).

Sincerely,
Andy Baker

[xSAWxBLADEx]

Originally Posted by animenerdjohn

From what I was told by one of the people I reported her to, the had apparently received lots of complaints. That is bad because

A) that means she encountered lots of people.
B) Because nothing was done to try and fix the situation (But I guess that was the theme this year).

It wasn't necessary in this thread but it was a theme of this year. FIRST knew their fields were faulty the first week, and didn't fix it. I'm not saying they didn't try but I feel Einstein would have been alot more fun if all three robots were moving on the red alliance during the first two finals.

[JaneYoung]

Having been one of the volunteers that has helped run safety glasses tables at past events, I can tell you that there are some guidelines that go with them. These are a couple of the guidelines that I was given:

1. the safety glasses are for guests and visitors, they are not for teams
2. everyone must sign the safety glasses out and sign them back in

To varying degrees, I was told that teams should bring their own glasses and should 'know better', serving as role models of responsibility. I have also been told that the safety glasses station is one that comes with gate keeping responsibilities.

Reading through some of the commentary, I can see that the volunteer was following those guidelines. To kick it up a further notch, the safety glasses volunteers were probably told that teams should know the importance of having their own safety glasses by the time they get to Championship level.

The message is correct. The messenger needs some work in the area of interacting with others and in conducting herself in a professional manner.

Regarding the age/mentor confusion... I have confused ages before, not correctly assessing the age of the student: junior high, high school, and/or college. It has made me feel like a total dork and, when that has happened, I have apologized. Sometimes, an apology is not enough but it is always a good start.

I'm sorry that happened but do follow the correct procedure in following up with your complaint. And, if you get a chance, think about the positive interactions that you had at the Championship. I hope there were many that far outweighed the rudeness of the safety glasses volunteer.

A side comment - there were a couple of safety glasses stations that were located in very cramped quarters and, in my mind, were a little dangerous for the people that were running those stations. The teams, moving as a large enthusiastic crowd, could have easily run them over but for the tables that served as a protective border between the volunteers and the crowd. If I had been assigned to one of those cramped stations and blocked in by the crowds, I would have asked to have been reassigned or I would have stepped down from that station and explained my reasoning to the VC. That's an .02 from my perspective.

Jane

[RoboMom]

Originally Posted by xSAWxBLADEx

It wasn't necessary in this thread but it was a theme of this year. FIRST knew their fields were faulty the first week, and didn't fix it. I'm not saying they didn't try but I feel Einstein would have been alot more fun if all three robots were moving on the red alliance during the first two finals.

These are open forums. Everyone is welcome to post their opinion.
But:
1. this is not the correct thread for your opinion on this. Search the portal if you feel like you would like to voice your opinion on this topic.

[Adam Freeman]

I will say that while 99% of the volunteers at Champs were completely respectful, courteous, and cheerful...but, I did find myself sometimes longing for the next time I could play in Michigan again.

There were times where the pokey stick guy was basically a sleep. Which I can understand that it has to be the most boring job ever, but that's not really acceptable. On Thursday balls that flew out of the field we not quickly chased down and returned to the field. Now, most of these things are very very small, but it just showed that many of these volunteers had very little experience with this game. As the weekend moved towards eliminations, things started getting better, so atleast there was continuous improvement.

But, there was one person that really bothered me. I believe it was the Field reset lead on Archimedes. It started during practice on Thursday when he was trying to get a penalty called on us for grappling the bridge. I guess this is fine, but I would prefer my penalties get called by a referee. He also was constantly rushing my drive team to get the robot setup. I know there is a schedule, but this is also a competition. We are trying to do some advanced things in Hybrid modes, and they don't work unless the robot gets setup correctly...which takes a little bit of time. Usually the field hasn't even connected before we are done with setup.

There is no place in FIRST for rude volunteers. Especially being rude to the students. Volunteers might not get paid to be there...but neither do we, actually we have to pay (a lot) to be there.

I would prefer that the volunteers on Einstein understand that all of us down on the floor are interested in seeing the matches too.

Overall my teams interactions with the volunteers were positive, at that's all that matters.

[MrTechCenter]

Originally Posted by elemental

I was a safety glasses volunteer at Peachtree. We were told not to give out safety glasses to teams. No exceptions. The volunteer co-ordinator was not particularly happy with us when we did make exceptions. There were some times when I really wanted to help but I didn't want to risk doing something "wrong".

I was a safety glasses attendant last year at Sacramento. It was just me and my friend, no adults except for this one nice lady who periodically came to check how many glasses we had and then make announcements to pit admin and try to find more accordingly. We were supposed to sub-in for the two girls who were working there for a couple hours (they never came back), and the only rules they told us is "Make sure nobody walks in without safety glasses, make sure nobody walks out WITH them."

[FrankJ]

I understand the need to not supplying safety glasses to teams who should have their own. But how about this? Get some UGLY safety glasses. Attach a large object on a cable to them. They can be two minute loaners to allow someone get to the pits to get their own.

No excuse for rudeness but, with as many volunteers need to run an event the size of championships you are bound to get a few bad ones. Be glad she was handing out safety glasses & not inspecting robots. Speaking of Einstein. "Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Couldn't you use a different entrance?

[Walter Deitzler]

I know that there was a problem with a volunteer and all, but there were also multiple doors. While this kind of behavior is inexcusable, I would have just left and gone to one of the other doors, to see if one of the other volunteers would have given me a pair.

[dricks]

I was a volunteer at the Championship this year. Unfortunately when you have as many people as you had volunteering you are bound to have one or two that may not be as courteous as they should be. Any time you get this mainy people together, there will be something happen that someone doesn't like. Over all I beleive FIRST does a better job than most in running an event of this scope.