Firing a Volunteer

I ran the Charm City Reptile and Amphibian Rescue for 14 years (no longer in operation). Here is a story about the challenges of hiring volunteers.

Names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Firing a volunteer is always awkward. I suppose firing anyone is that way. However, it seems especially odd when someone is a volunteer and doing the work out of the kindness of their heart. I had to do it three times; it sucked every time.

Johnny

One day we were cleaning cages. It was Ben, Howard, Johnny and me. They were all kids. Howard was the oldest at about 15 or 16. Ben was about 12 and Johnny 13. There were a bunch of containers that needed cleaning and it was a nice day, so we were hosing them outside.

On a side note, we always had a lot of issues with the hose! I have no idea why. I went through about two to three nozzles every summer. One time Ben dropped the hose. Somehow it got stuck in the on position. As a result, the hose was spraying him in the face as it lay on the ground, much to the delight of everyone who was there that day.

But I digress… One day, we were in the backyard scrubbing, disinfecting and hosing out plastic containers used for a variety of reasons. Some containers were temporary housing, some were used for transportation and some were hide boxes (a safe place for the animal to hide within the cage). The containers accumulated because it was a pain to clean them inside the house.

When I came in the house to use the bathroom all Hell broke loose. It was only two minutes or less when I heard screaming. Opening the bathroom door, there was Johnny, a knife in each hand, trying to stab Howard. Ben was still outside, oblivious to what was happening.

I immediately started screaming at Johnny to put down the knives. One was a butter knife and the other was the big knife I used to chop vegetables for the animals. Both had been in the kitchen sink. For a little kid, Johnny was pretty strong. I didn’t feel the least bit threatened by the butter knife, so I concentrated on the big knife, probably about 10″ long. The first stupid thing I did was jump in between them. If anyone was getting cut, it was going to be me. I completely forgot about the fact that I had no health insurance at the time.

I grabbed Johnny’s wrist, trying to squeeze the knife loose. That didn’t work. He was really strong. “Put down that knife!” I yelled. Howard was yelling too, but it was unintelligible. Johnny was also yelling and whatever he was saying made no sense. I never did find out what happened. Johnny’s story was that Howard touched him on his sore shoulder.

Although it seemed like a lot longer, we struggled for a minute or two. Eventually, Johnny simply let the knife drop to the floor. And then, he stormed out. He only lived about a block away. Ben and Howard both lived about two blocks away in the other direction (across the street from each other).

Howard said he didn’t know why Johnny attacked him. I guessed that was not entirely true, but didn’t press the matter.

Howard and I went back outside, and Ben asked where everyone was. He was still washing containers!

After the boys left, I called Johnny’s house. His mother got on the phone and I told her what happened. She asked, “What did Howard do to him?”

I explained that it didn’t matter what Howard did, and I didn’t even know. The thing that bothered me was that Johnny responded by grabbing the first available weapon in my house. I said, “Kids can’t work here if they can’t be trusted. I can’t have that kind of violence here. That’s not what I’m all about.” We are supposed to be here for the animals.

Johnny’s mom responded, “He doesn’t like volunteering there anymore anyway.”

I said, “Good, because I don’t want him back.”

Ben kept telling me – for several years – that Johnny wanted his community service hours for working here. I told Ben that Johnny needed to “be a man” and come here and ask me himself or he could forget it.

Years later, Johnny needed community service hours to graduate from high school. He came to me to have his paperwork signed, but never apologized.

Ned

I received an online volunteer form from a guy named Ned. He looked great on paper. Little did I know, things would be rocky between Ned and me! He missed the first day he was supposed to volunteer. Many volunteers do that, and eventually disappear completely. Working with a volunteer staff has its own issues, and that is definitely one of them.

Back to Ned. The next Sunday, he called. He said he was coming with his parents so they could see where he would be working. I said okay and then hung up scratching my head. I thought the guy was in his 20s. Why would he bring his parents to check us out?

As soon as I met him, I realized why. He was autistic, and had Aspberger’s syndrome. That carries its own frustrations. People with Aspberger’s don’t see things the way the rest of us do. They do better with pictures. In fact, my niece, who went to graduate school to work with autistic people, told me that I should make charts or pictures telling him what to do. I was not equipped or prepared to do that.

Ned was constantly walking into me, leaving things like the poop bucket (where we dump water bowls to keep me from having to call Roto-Rooter several times a year) in the middle of the room. Once it got knocked over onto the dining room carpet because I couldn’t see in front of me (I was carrying something). Ned had left it right in the walkway. I asked him to go upstairs and help the people there because I didn’t want to yell at him. But, I was so mad! A bucket of poop water was soaking into my dining room carpet.

Another time, he brought me a supposedly clean water bowl. I told him, “There is still poop on the side.” And I pointed to it.

He turned the full water bowl upside down, dumping about four cups of water onto the floor, and said calmly, “I don’t see it.”

Needless to say, he didn’t last very long. He disappeared for several weeks. Then he would call and say, “I can’t be here the last three weeks.” That happened a couple times. The last time he called, I told him not to come back.

Yes, I fired an autistic guy. So sue me. He had to be supervised 100% of the time. If it was just Ned and me here, he would stop working when I had an adoption as I couldn’t trust him to do things on his own. In short, he was causing me to have more work and not really helping at all.

Since this is a monarchy and I am the Queen, I chose to say goodbye to Ned. Sorry. As much as I like to help “otherly able” people, the reptile rescue was not the forum for it.

Oh, that Keith

Keith was kind of a goof. He fancied himself very knowledgeable, but didn’t know much about anything. Of course, working at a rescue will remedy that pretty quickly. He was always practicing his “karate” moves by waving his arms in the air and tossing in a kick every now and then. It didn’t look like he was doing any kind of martial arts.

He thought he knew a lot about reptiles, maybe he was just as ignorant about karate. I have no idea since I don’t know anything about karate. He was always making arm gestures and twirling the snake hooks like they were weapons. Personally, I think he simply watched too many martial arts movies.

Keith did something not so smart one day. He just reached into a 75-gallon aquarium enclosure that had a Burmese python in it. You never just reach into a tank with a Burmese python in it! The first 30 seconds or so are the best time to get bitten by the snake.

And, he did. He screamed. But, he didn’t yell a stream of cuss words. Nope. He yelled, “This doesn’t feel very good!!!”

That’s not the kind of thing you yell around here, unless you want everyone to laugh at you. And that is exactly what happened. Everyone stopped what they were doing and just started laughing. It wasn’t funny at all, but what he said was. The snake coiled around his wrist for a few minutes and gave him a good hug. Eventually, it let go.

This last straw came when a guy was sitting on the stairs holding a carpet python he wanted to adopt. He wanted to handle it to see how it behaved. Sometimes carpets can be quite aggressive. Keith came over and waved his fingers in front of the snake – a sure way to get bitten. The snake started striking at the guy!

The adopter said, “Dude! Don’t taunt the snake.” That was the last straw. I decided to fire Keith that day. I ended up calling him later and I got his machine. Fired via voicemail… Lame on my part, but I felt like I had to do something immediately.

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Read more by Holli Friedland.