Volunteer Snark

[sabotabby]

Imagine you've fled unthinkable horror in your homeland to journey over 9000 km to a country where you don't speak the language. You have nothing but what you've managed to carry with you. Maybe you're living in a hotel, maybe some stranger's basement. You are desperately trying to get your life back together.

After all that, would you want to be reading Twilight?

(Fun fact: Twilight is the most frequently donated book.)

If you don't want used binders and notebooks that your kid has scribbled on with half the pages missing, why would a Syrian refugee?

Same with rusty kitchen stuff.

No one wants your dictionaries. Paper dictionaries are obsolete. That goes for people who donate to my Little Free Library too, by the way.

If you donate dirty kitchenware and appliances and don't wash them, I am silently judging you out loud to the other volunteers. Have some self-respect.

How about that trend for making French onion soup in French onion soup bowls? It was kind of weird, wasn't it? I see we all regret that phase of our lives. I'm craving French onion soup, though.

Unlike the refugees, you allegedly speak English. Why not read what we do and do not accept, and thus save a volunteer (i.e., me) a trip to Value Village in -30°C weather to drop off clothes we can't accept?

If at any point in this blanket's history your baby has puked on it, I guarantee that I will be able to smell it. I don't care how much you washed it. I don't care if no one else can smell it because they all have kids and are used to it. I still smell it and it will haunt my nightmares.

How can one man amass so many kitchen tongs? And yet it all came from the same guy. Are kitchen tong horders a thing?

People who donate pillows still in their packaging: You are my fucking heroes and I hope you get all the Valentine's Day orgasms you want.

People who donate anything still in its packaging, especially if there is a picture of the thing on the packaging: We love you and I hope you are showered with unicorns and puppies and love.

Whoever brought the red velvet and white chocolate cookies: I could fucking kiss you.

People who raid hotel rooms and donate the little bottles of shampoo: What is wrong with you? Reconsider your life choices.

Companies who give out water bottles with their logos on it: You know where those things end up, right?

The moral of the story: Don't donate trash. You know what happens when you donate your trash to charity? Some volunteer has to throw it out or donate it to another, less discerning charity. And they'll probably throw it out. They might even need to pay for junk removal. So you are hurting the cause, not helping. You know the difference between useful things and garbage, so why not donate useful things and throw the garbage out yourself?

Comments

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

WORD.

[sabotabby]

Don't get me wrong: I love doing this. It's the most unambiguously good thing I've done in a very long time. I just wish people weren't morons.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

Hwy, your post reminds me to vet the shit I donate. :)

Cache of Tongs

[rinue.livejournal.com]

Theory: An aspiring consumer products tester tried to make his name with a viral internet article ranking the various tongs on the market.

Alt Theory: The fed-up spouse of a tong aficionado. (I have lived in a house with at least 10 coffeemaking device variants because my husband kept getting new ones in case they were better than the best one we had.)

I would definitely appreciate a paper unabridged dictionary. (Maybe I should say "unabridged" because unless it's the OED, we're fooling ourselves.) But collegiate dictionaries, GTFO. In the U.S. my assumption is you'd get a million tiny new testaments. I don't know how many I've been handed by random strangers in public, but it's a lot.

RE: Cache of Tongs

[robby.livejournal.com]

This donation could represent the last residual of the Tong wars. A farewell to tongs.

RE: Cache of Tongs

[sabotabby]

Hee hee hee.

RE: Cache of Tongs

[sabotabby]

I love your theories.

The truth is more mysterious, though. A young woman came in with a bunch of great kitchen stuff. She said that the bulk of it was from her upstairs neighbour, who accumulated multiples of kitchen things. All of the tongs were of similar design—which was a very nice design, I might add—in different colours. She didn't know why he would do this and was as baffled as I was. Anyway they went to a good cause.

I think maybe they could use an Arabic-English dictionary, but not a bunch of outdated collegiate dictionaries, which is what we got. On the plus side, unlike the dictionaries that get donated to me, none of them appeared to have obvious mould.

I got a New Testament in my library today. It went, as all religious texts do, right in the recycle bin.

RE: Cache of Tongs

[rinue.livejournal.com]

Doesn't everybody coordinate their tong colour with the salad being served? (Reword that to: Does anybody coordinate their tong colour to the salad being served.)

Re: Cache of Tongs

[sabotabby]

Apparently some do!

[princealberic.livejournal.com]

I don't know what's wrong with paper dictionaries? I've never donated one but I'm curious.

Otherwise, wow people donate so much junk.

Regarding the cookies, in places that take food donations, is it acceptable to donate non-essential food? Or were the cookies for the volunteers?

[sabotabby]

The majority of dictionaries I get in my library are old. The vast majority of people who use the library can just look up words they don't know online. So the dictionaries just sit there taking up space until I throw them out. People who need dictionaries, like editors and primary school children, already have them.

For the Syrians, they might be able to use a new dictionary or an Arabic-English dictionary but they tend to be living in really small places so that's an awful lot of real estate to take up.

Different places that take food donations have different rules, but I'd say non-essential food is a good thing as long as it fits their requirements (non-perishable, in original packaging, etc.). The cookies were for the volunteers, though, and I guess anyone who came in and was hungry.

[mle292.livejournal.com]

I was once told that charities really appreciated hotel toiletries for people in temporary living arrangements because they were easy to transport and easy to deal with while using shared water facilities. Now, it appears to be bullshit, and I freely admit that this is not the first time I've found out that bullshit exists.

What is your objection to them?

[sabotabby]

I don't have an objection beyond that with the people coming in, they're trying to juggle big boxes of all the things they could possibly need, and likely moving from hotels into hopefully more permanent accommodations, so a lot of little items aren't so useful. It's not that they're not useful—we stock them and put them out—but they are of minimal use. Especially Q-tips that come in packets of one. WTF?

I also really wonder who amasses that many unused tiny shampoo bottles. Are they just going from room to room lifting stuff? It's kinda weird.

[50-ft-queenie.livejournal.com]

What's wrong with donating hotel toiletries? Presumably the people donating actually paid for the hotel rooms, and are not actually raiding them. Every hotel I've been in always gives me more toiletries than I need and I often toss the extras into my bag to take to the gym.

A former boss of mine travelled at least once a month for business and always ended up donating a big bag of toiletries to a local shelter, who were very appreciative. Most people don't think of things like shampoo and soap when they're making donations, but they're very much needed.

[sabotabby]

I keep the extras too, but we're talking a lot, and weird things like single-packaged Q-tips. But see above—people are likely moving from hotels to small spaces, and tiny items like that get lost.

Toiletries and cleaning supplies are the most important things, and we love everyone who donates them. One really big thing is pads and tampons. Anyone who donates them is a hero.

[50-ft-queenie.livejournal.com]

Single packaged Q-tips? That's a new one. I've actually never seen them.

Having lots of shampoo bottles etc. to donate doesn't strike me as too weird, especially for people who travel a lot on business. The boss I mentioned above travelled at least once a month and was gone for 3-4 nights each time. If the hotel gives you fresh toiletries daily, that's 12 bottles (4 shampoo, 4 conditioner, 4 soap/shower gel) per month.

I'm also not getting how they get lost that easily. They're small, but not *that* small. I could see tossing a few into each box so that people have something to bathe with for the first 2-3 days in their new place.

[sabotabby]

Oh, these were tiny. Like an inch and a half or so. I'm not sure they were even shampoo. But anyway, we put it all out, including the single packaged Q-tips.

[smhwpf.livejournal.com]

Ha. Snarking is fun.

Not sure what to make of the fact that Twilight is the most donated book. On the one hand, it means lots of people read Twilight. But we knew that. On the other, that they have no desire to reread it, which shows good taste. On the third hand, that they wish to inflict it on refugees. I dunno, I guess there are refugees who will a) appreciate distractions from reality and b) have bad taste.

When I stay in hotel rooms, if I have opened a bottle of some toiletry (shower gel for example) I will take the rest of it home, on the assumption that it would otherwise go to waste. But this does not lead to the build-up of a collection. I suppose if one stayed in hotels often enough it might.

[kakodaimon.livejournal.com]

I was definitely watching the shittiest shows during the hardest times of my life. The idea of reading Twilight as a refugee doesn't seem absurd to me.

[sabotabby]

Afaik, the majority of refugees coming here don't speak English. So I doubt they have much use for SMeyer's tortured prose.

The generous interpretation of the people who donate lots of hotel toiletries is that they travel a lot. Otherwise, I picture them going from room to room stealing hotel toiletries.

[smhwpf.livejournal.com]

Mm, that's true, though presumably they're learning English. Twilight could be a good object lesson in how not to write it.

It would be an awful lot of risk for very little reward to go from room to room stealing toiletries. But they may well be, for example, taking all the bottles allocated to a double room when they've only used a little bit of one. And then if they're staying a second night, taking the new bottles that are put there to replenish the ones they took after the first night. I feel this is going somewhat beyond legitimate looting, although if it's a big chain hotel and they're doing it for the refugees one should perhaps not raise too many ethical quibbles.

[sabotabby]

It's not so much that I think it's ethically wrong (it isn't at all!), just weird. But other people have pointed out that it's not that weird.

[ironed_orchid]

The Twilight thing is the one I actually know the answer to:

When a book is the sort of best seller as Twilight or the Da Vinci Code, then used booksellers don't want it. They get people coming in all the time trying to sell it to them, but it's not actually in very big demand as a used book because so many people bough it new. So they might take a few of the absolutely best quality doesn't look like it was ever opened copies, but most people who try to sell it will end up donating it to charities who take books.

[sabotabby]

Oh, that makes sense.

I find a lot of DaVinci Codes in my library too.

[whatifoundthere.livejournal.com]

I disagree about the dictionaries -- my students are DESPERATE for them, and few of them understand how to use online dictionaries even after I show them.

And I've never "raided" a hotel for toiletries, unless I did it in an Ambien haze or something, and I haven't even STAYED in a hotel in years -- but I still have millions of those damn bottles somehow. I don't think that's bad life choices so much as the occult power of hotels.

But otherwise, omg people are dicks and they should stop.

[sabotabby]

Huh, that's interesting! I just assume that old dictionaries aren't very useful to people, especially people learning English.

Regardless, 99% of them have mould.

So apparently acquiring vast amounts of hotel toiletries is a thing! I didn't know. But I rarely stay in hotels and when I do, they aren't very good ones.

[whatifoundthere.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I would have agreed with you until I had to spend years looking at webpages through my students' eyes. Here is the dictionary.com homepage as of right now:



Imagine you've fled unthinkable horror in your homeland to journey over 9000 km to a country where etc. And somebody tells you that this webpage is a way to look up words. WHAT IN GOD'S NAME DO YOU DO.

Most of my students don't even get so far as using an online dictionary. They type the word they want into Google, with predictably hilarious results, or maybe "wordtheywanttolookup word" or "wordtheywanttolookup meaning", which sometimes gets them a definition but sometimes gets them on Urban Dictionary or some random ranty blog post. At least they don't have mould I guess.

To be fair, my students often aren't great with paper dictionaries either; you'd be surprised how many times they don't understand a single word in the definition. It's pretty depressing. But they feel more comfortable with paper dictionaries and often ask to borrow mine.

[sabotabby]

Fair enough!

Mine use dictionary.com. For everything. Including as a source for papers and to "win" arguments on the intertubes.

[whatifoundthere.livejournal.com]

Hah, I know those feels. The list of Do Not Do Thises that I handed out every semester back when I was university teaching had "NO DICTIONARY DEFINITIONS" prominently featured.