Part II Day 24: March 5, 2010 (toothless co-workers, poor man's buffet, and everybody knows that "snitches get stitches")

Position: Volunteer

Days Officially Unemployed: 49

I arrive at the San Diego homeless facility at 6 a.m. to serve breakfast. After signing in, the head cook walks me over to put on a disposable plastic apron, plastic gloves and a hairnet. A few stereotypical “lunch ladies” move around the large kitchen preparing breakfast. After I’m all suited up and hyped to serve breakfast, the head cook tells me I can go out and assist in the dining room. Huh?

I spend two hours not feeding the poor but, instead, cleaning up their garbage and wiping down their tables. My “co-workers” consist of a tiny white woman, a large white woman, a Pacific Islander missing his front teeth, and, later, a quiet black guy who says, “Another day,” when he arrives. They all turn out to be very nice, but don’t bother introducing themselves to me. Apparently, they are either residents or part of the court ordered community service crew, since they don’t wear a volunteer badge like me, but real I.D. badges instead. I haven’t yet figured out what the different colored badges mean.

The Pacific Islander guy seems to be the self-appointed shift supervisor, and he mostly tells me what to do. The tiny lady gives me my first introduction to the job, saying, “We stand around a lot.” When I laugh, she says, “Well, we do.” She tells me they’re overstaffed, and she’s right. There are maybe twenty tables in this cafeteria setting and about as many residents. Even at the busiest time, there are no more than forty residents eating breakfast at once.

My co-workers stand around talking about the behavior of the residents––“they waste coffee and food”––or talking about their own lives: “I either fail classes or ace them. I’m just not a C student.” One of the residents is a woman, easily in her sixties, and she wears an oversized T-shirt that says “Snitches Get Stitches” in a huge font across the front. Another resident says, as she fills up her coffee mug, “I’m off to the boringest class on the planet.” I ask her what that might be. “JSS,” she says, “Job Search Skills. They teach you how to make a resume and write cover letters and all that. Look, I’m fifty-six years old, if I haven’t learned that by now there’s no hope for me.”

What impresses me most is the food variety at breakfast. Today’s hot breakfast consists of thin French toast and a side of country ham. The residents can also choose to have Cream ‘o Wheat and/or three varieties of cereal––Cheerios, Chex, or Corn Flakes. Over by the cereal, apples, oranges, and bananas fill three plastic bins. My Pacific Islander friend tells me the residents get most excited on days when they serve bacon. “People love bacon. They go crazy for it.” Near where the work crew and I do our standing around, sits a popular coffee machine and a milk machine. None of the residents wants for hunger.

When people get up to leave, I wipe down their tables, taking my time to do the job right, getting all the syrup and stains with the wet towel. Even though this is menial work, it still feels good, like I’m a small cog in this machine that’s turning people’s lives around. Sometimes, working for free for the benefit of someone else seems so much more satisfying than working for yourself.

The heartbreaking part of the morning is seeing the children in here with their parents. They range in age from toddlers to teenagers, and I can’t imagine how difficult life is when you’re being raised in a shelter. At least they’re in a really nice shelter that provides the framework and infrastructure for overcoming this adversity. The charity seeks people to help mentor the kids, but you must commit for longer terms (6 months to a year), because, as the director says, these kids need stability in their lives.

Breakfast ends promptly at 8 a.m., which seems early to me. I help clean and then fold the tables as each one is abandoned. Folding the round tables by yourself is a bit of workout, because you have to press a lever underneath and then push the edges hard to get them to fold. The tiny lady compliments me, saying I’m pretty good at it for a first timer. After I move all the tables to one side of the room and sweep half the floor so my buddy can mop, I head out.

As I pass through the courtyard, several of the residents from breakfast sit on benches along the wall and sun themselves. I smile at them as I walk by, and a kind looking black woman says, “Thank you for volunteering.” That makes the whole morning worth it right there.