He Helped With the Plant Sale for Years. Then a New Person in Charge Refused to Let Him Volunteer
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Volunteer programs run smoothly when organizers recognize useful experience instead of replacing common sense with rigid gatekeeping.
A college student had spent years assembling plant boxes at remarkable speed in exchange for early sale access.
That efficient arrangement ended when a new coordinator decided an unfamiliar name mattered more than the work happening before her.
Check out the full story below.
I’m not a volunteer? Okay.
In the 1990s I was a college student studying Botany.
A local botanical garden sponsored a plant sale every year, which brought in dozens of vendors of rare and native plants and probably upwards of a thousand plant fanatics.
People would drop thousands of dollars on plants at this sale.
The botanic garden had a volunteer policy that was basically “work for two hours helping at the sale and you get in a half hour before the general public.”
I seldom bought anything, but I knew and chatted with several of the vendors, and it was nice to peruse without the insane crush of people.
He discovered a unique skill.
The mostly elderly volunteers did various tasks like man the cash registers and information booth, and the younger ones like me would set up tables or help people carry out their purchases.
One year I discovered that I was really fast at assembling boxes.
The botanic garden had boxes printed just for the sale, they were basically cardboard flats for carrying plants.
At some point I started coming two hours early just to put together boxes. I would do 20 while others were struggling to make one.
By the end of two hours, I would have a huge stack of boxes that would last through most of the sale.
Uh, oh. A new person in charge is bound to mean problems.
The last year I volunteered, there was a new person in charge of the volunteers.
When I showed up and started putting together boxes, she came up to me and said “what are you doing?”
“I’m putting together boxes.”
“You’re not on the list.”
“There’s a list? I’m just a volunteer.”
There’s apparently a new rule.
“Volunteers are required to work 8 hours in the garden every year, and I’ve never seen you before.”
This was news to me, having been doing the same thing for several years with no issues. Seemed suspicious considering most of the volunteers were in their 70s or 80s.
I had encountered this type of person before, so I knew better than to try to debate policy.
He didn’t even try to fight it.
“Well, okay,” I said, dropping the box I was putting together and walking to the back of the line of people waiting to get in.
I had only been there long enough to put about a dozen boxes together. The stacks of unassembled boxes sat there and no one came to put them together.
After the tiny stack of boxes was gone, people had to put together their own boxes and they were ticked. The line went really slow as every person had to stop and make their own box.
A minor inconvenience multiplied by a thousand people becomes a real problem.
I’m just sorry that the public had to bear the brunt of it.
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The unfortunate thing is that since the person in charge is new, unlike him, she won’t know how much better it was last year when he knocked out putting together all the boxes.
Let’s read the comments on Reddit.
Here’s another story about volunteering.
This would’ve been a good comeback!
Really, it’s the rules that are weird.
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an artist who made sure to leave the walls of her home blank and boring before moving out, even though they were covered with gorgeous murals before then.
This person knows how to take care of volunteers.
The student immediately stopped after being told they were not a volunteer, leaving shoppers to assemble their own boxes once the tiny supply disappeared.
Each minor delay slowed the entire line, proving how much invisible labor one experienced helper had quietly contributed.
The coordinator weeded out her fastest volunteer and planted a logistical nightmare instead.
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