rhyme wrote:
What if poor people scare you?
Oh, lord, then this is NOT the job for you. NOT NOT NOT.
Last night a woman came in who was clearly VERY mentally disturbed. She had this HUGE pile of paperwork, old water bills, kmart receipts, god knows what. She kept rambling at me, basically repeating her zip code and her water bill over and over and over. Reminded me of the guy in the mental institution who tells Hurely the cursed numbers on Lost. Only she had more variety and was much more active than that guy.
I just kept talking to her very slowly, trying to get information out of her to figure out if she actually needed to get her taxes done. After a while, I realized she didn't so I extricated myself as gently as I could. It makes me sad, actually, to see what some folks have to carry around with them. I can only imagine that life must be very hard.
But really, most people we help are SO incredibly grateful, fun people, tell you interesting things. And whoever runs the show will generally end up dealing with anyone difficult or frustrating - that's the joy of being a volunteer. You don't have to do anything you don't want to because we're all so desperate to have you come back.