I was a volunteer for an anime con, and one of the duties that I volunteered for was door duty for [animated adult content] theater. Aside from making sure that guests had badges or a wristband (of the day), I also had to check IDs to make sure they were over eighteen.

A guy who was clearly in his forties came up.

Me: “Can I see your ID, please, sir?”

Guy: “Oh, please. I clearly look old enough.”

Me: “I knew high schoolers who looked like they were in their twenties. ID, please.”

He showed me his ID, went in, and came out ten minutes later. I guess it wasn’t his type of showing.

CONTENT WARNING: Firearms

I’m eleven and volunteering part-time. A customer exits the library but sets off the alarm. Maybe he forgot to check out one of his books? We can just check that.

No. He pulls a revolver out of his back pocket.

Patron: “Guess this must have set it off.”

I’m eleven, and a very tall man is casually pointing a gun at me, so I say the only thing I can think of.

Me: “Sir, we ask that you don’t bring guns into the library; there are children. We’re closing in four minutes; did you need anything else?”

The children’s librarian scooped me into the AV closet until the patron left the parking lot.

CONTENT WARNING: Thoughts Of Suicide (Happy ending!)
 

This story reminded me of some experiences during the first year of the global health crisis. 

I did a lot of volunteering via the NHS (National Health Service), mostly shopping and other errands for people whose doctors had told them to shelter at home. 

But sometimes I would do check-in-and-chat. It’s a simple concept. Those people who had been told to stay at home were offered the chance of getting a call from a stranger to see how they were doing. I only did a few of these because I would find myself crying quietly after the call. 

But the most harrowing and then heartwarming story was one I heard of through an online support group for volunteers. Early in the first lockdown, a volunteer rang an elderly woman to see how she was doing, and she was distraught. There was a cold snap with temperatures below freezing overnight, and her boiler had failed, so she and her home were literally freezing. She’d become so desperate that she was looking through her medicines trying to work out which combination would most quickly end her life!

The thing is, she had boiler cover; she was paying [Energy Company] hundreds of pounds a year so this would not happen, but they were refusing to come out for “health and safety” reasons, even though her life was in danger. The volunteer called them. There was no doubt they understood, but they would do nothing.

The volunteer came online to find out what to do. He lived too far away and had no car. We were all desperate to help. Luckily, another volunteer lived near her and knew a plumber. The woman’s boiler was fixed a few hours later, and the only payment the plumber took was a cup of tea (plenty of sugar!) and two biscuits.

The lady did not want to fuss, so unfortunately, no formal complaint was made. I’ve just checked, and they would charge me £600 a year for this “service”. I didn’t hear any reports that they stopped taking monthly payments during lockdowns.

Related:
Their Cold Heart Is In Need Of Some Heating

CONTENT WARNING: Crass Humor

I was one of several volunteers running an event for a group of kids from a very deprived area. We’d taken them camping for three weeks in a different country. This was all a Big Deal. Most of them had never been abroad before; heck, most of them had never been away from home before.

The little sods were constantly ragging on each other. “Your Mum” jokes were having a bit of a moment in school playgrounds at the time, and it was their favourite way to wind each other up. We had several kids with us whose mothers had died or left — mostly left. They were getting really upset because the others were just hammering them with “Your Mum” jokes.

So, we banned the jokes.

One night, with the kids in bed and (supposedly) asleep in their tents, a couple of the volunteers did a well-being and security sweep round the campsite… and returned to the central building (where the other adults were preparing the next day’s activities and clearing up) with two little ones in tow.

It seems that, instead of sleeping the sleep of the just, they’d been trading “Your Mum” jokes — and they seemed stunned to discover that tent walls are not soundproof. Who knew?

Anyway, the two volunteers basically called all our attention to the matter and told the kids to repeat what they’d been saying to each other. The idea was we’d all consider their transgression, set a firm face against it, and agree on a “punishment”.

I cannot remember what the first “joke” was; I know it was pretty weak. The second one had pretty much all of us suddenly suffering “coughing” fits.

“Your mum’s t*ts are so square, the milk comes out in cartons.”

Unfortunately, things can often get screwy with small rural churches. The thing is, everything is basically being worked on by volunteers, and those volunteers are not necessarily professionals. There can also be very little oversight or built-in accountability and generally iffy organization. So, you get the occasional person who in other locations might be the petty HOA board tyrant and tries to throw their (nonexistent) weight around, people who feel proprietary because they’ve been with the church so long, etc. And because it’s a social community instead of a business, people get leery of calling people out because it’ll cause drama (or at least pop the top on all the preexisting simmering drama).

I went to a tiny private high school that was affiliated with a nearby church. Some guy died, and in his will, he left some money in the trust of the church to be used for the school.

A decent amount of the congregation decided that the money should go to the church instead, and apparently, the church meetings got spicy.

I didn’t go to the church, but I got to school and even my unperceptive self could recognize the palpable aura of people being pissed off. (School staff had been at this meeting, and a decent amount of other students did attend this church. I mostly got details from a friend and my dad since he was part of the school board.)

Then, to make it worse, the church treasurer’s mother for some reason had access to the church safe. She took out the inherited money, which was for some reason physically in said safe, and had herself a shopping spree.

That didn’t de-escalate things, but it did get a lot of the details hidden from us students since there was now a question of pressing charges, so I’m actually not sure how it ended.