The Entry

As a newbie volunteer at City Harvest, I went 15 mins earlier to the Acton place and tried to break into (open) the door. Then I saw a person(Jason, the Manager) come down from his car and walk towards me. He said I was too early. We opened the door together and Martin, a regular volunteer, soon followed. We then need to sign our entry in a super slow responsive iPad in the reception. Took 2 minutes to type my name.

Walkthrough

Jason gave a tour of the place and asked me to make myself tea in the pantry while we wait for someone to guide me on the tasks for the day. 2 minutes later, Richard knocked on the pantry window asking me to open the front door. I let him in, without knowing, that he is going to be my guru for the day. Martin made a coffee and I put my teabags in before the hot water was ready, Jason introduced Richard to me and explained the tasks.

The mechanics of crate

Richard, who is another regular in city harvest, says enough information to get the task going and saved the explanation for later. The first task involves separating the stacked crate and getting them ready to fill them with food. Though I questioned the reasoning behind that in mind, I then suppressed my why/what for/how questions and put my mind on follower mode. Martin came and said he will take care of the crate separation and asked us to focus on unloading the food.

Unpack and Load

There are around 1000s of Fake bacon and Pastries boxed inside "the Fridge" area. Had to put on two gloves as I couldn't feel the fingers after 20 minutes. Richard told me the tips and tricks on how to unpack and fill the crates. 2 from this, 2/3 from that. Unpack, throw the boxes away, and load the crate. Repeat. Took me a few attempts to get the gist of the task and simply wondered at the engineering involved in the task right from placing the crate and placement of our positions. Richard and I filled around 120 crates in 2 hours. We had a small break afterward and had a chat with Martin. This task is similar to the biscuit sorting one we did in Hanwell but at a different level.

Label and ship

The next task was to fold the thrown empty boxes and then put them in another jumbo crate so that Jason can squeeze the cardboard boxes. Apparently, today was not a busy day. So we haven't had many people going around and moving things. We then removed the old labels from the loaded crates and Richard stick new expiry date labels and moved them to the front of the fridge section. This is to make the shipping process easier. Richard was moving at Jet speed at every task and I was left in awe I tried to catch up to him, which he noticed later and surprised. I told them there are more goodgymers like you who do tasks at supersonic speed and strength.

Crate separation

Richard and I then cleaned the place and started separating the stacked crate, so that the next badge at 4 pm has things ready when Amazon food delivery comes in. They need to repeat what we did but with more variety of food. Separating the crates was not easy as I thought. It needs a bit of thinking and processing to it as well. Richard was planning to do a double shift covering both the 12-4 pm and 4-8 pm one.

Fin

The time was ticking 3:15 pm and took a tea break and had a cake and bid my goodbyes. But not before having a photo shoot with the great people I met today. I would definitely visit again for another task. However, the registration process was a bit long as the website was not so great atm, which the city harvest team knows already, and they are planning to make the volunteer registrations simple and smooth sooner.