I have a favorite volunteer, and I tell her everything I shouldn't be telling her. I give her stats and juicy stories, I go over to her house, I pay for her lunch, she pays for my dinner, we drink wine together, and we gossip.
It was unusual how I approached her. It was my first full month working and I was at my absolute best. I did what I was told and more. I introduced myself to every volunteer I didn't know. I made small talk with all of them, even with volunteers outside of my team, and Diane happened to be one of them. Brand spanking new, and no one was talking to her as she stood around the front desk. So, the introvert approached the extrovert.
Diane is a socialite, but she's not conspicuous. She's edgy, intelligent, opinionated, open minded, and not afraid of having a contrary thought. She has age, but only in number, because she's charming, and I've never met anyone who spews YOUTH out of their very natural being, even amongst my own peers. Maybe that DGAF attitude comes with wisdom and age.
We connected immediately when I asked her what she retired from just recently, and it was teaching. What really sparked though, was when I asked her how she heard about volunteering here. For the month I've been working, I've only heard the same thing over and over and over again: "Crossroads," the megachurch in SW Ohio that not only donated the most money to the nonprofit I work for, but also birthed 3/4ths of the staff and 100% of the volunteers when it first started recruiting in October.
Diane, on the other hand, was the first volunteer that I've met that gave me a different answer. "The newspaper," she said, looking at me straight in the eye, lips still shaped as the sound of the last syllable, and shaking her head. "I didn't hear about it from Crossroads like everyone else did,"
And that's how we clicked: we were both cynical about the megachurch's overshadowing presence over this organization.
Of course, we ended up talking about my favorite topics, like education, gentrification in Cincinnati, and reading books instead of ebooks.
Sometimes, I wonder if I would allow such things, like "favorites," to marinate and captivate had my work place been a more permanent, adaquately paying kind of full time career. If I took the actual work more seriously than I take the actual outcome, which is all I care about; are we really "changing lives"? I probably wouldn't take "sick days" for days I feel stressed, and I probably wouldn't talk to my boss the way I do either. Not that it's unprofessional, but I get pretty passive aggressive. I only give what I receive.
Needless to say, having a "favorite" and engaging in work-defined unethical activites and conversations has only made my working life sweeter.
