Our company, Kaplan, does try to do things for the community. It supports many charities but lately they felt they needed to do more locally and staff were told that could do at least two days volunteering each year. It’s often difficult to take this sort of time off working in a support department like IT. The work still needs doing and this means that either you do it your own time or those left behind have to work harder. For this reason we avoided the challenge but recently decided to bite the bullet. Six of us decided to work the first shift at the Whitechapel Mission in London’s East End.
So, we arrived at Whitechapel at 05:30 and were given our instructions by Lilija, who is a permanent member of staff there. We were going to be preparing and cooking the food, distributing toiletries and hot drinks, serving breakfasts and then tidying up. The homeless can also request clothing and there was also the chance for them to charge their mobile phones, they can’t pinch the office electricity like most of us do, so this is really a great facility. A mobile isn’t a luxury item with the lifestyles they have. It all seemed very complicated with lots to remember but I kept thinking - there’s a new volunteer team very day, how hard can it be?
Well it was physically hard work but not mentally taxing, I was on sausage, bacon and burger duties, cooking about 200 of the first, about 100 rashers of the second, and a couple of dozen burgers. All in all these took about an hour to cook and, although I’m sure they were all edible, I don’t expect a Michelin star will be heading my way any time soon – no one said my compliments to the chef. Others were serving hot drinks and helping with toiletry distribution (for which there is no charge) whilst my boss, head of a large IT department, got to grips with the highly technical process of toasting bread, some 200 slices, using a machine that came with no F1 key. Others were buttering bread and frying what seemed like 150 eggs as well as heating up mushrooms, baked beans and tomatoes. At eight o’clock we began to serve the breakfasts. There are three set meals costing from 50p to £1 but most customers ordered à la carte and we had to use those mental arithmetic skills we all claim to have but so rarely have to prove. I can now calculate that two sausages, two eggs, a rasher of bacon with beans mushrooms, hash browns and six pieces of toast comes to 75p, or 70p to you sir. I was pleasantly surprised with the general demeanour and politeness of the people we were serving. In truth I’d expected some very rough characters but everyone I served was pleasant, if sometimes a little fussy. At one stage, after one person had sent back three eggs as not being cooked to his liking – in the end I just asked him to choose his own from the cooking tray – he requested baked beans, I politely asked how many and he replied 32, and then humorously commented that I’d given him 42 when I dished them out. This process lasted almost two hours and we served something like 180 people although I didn’t have time to count - this was a somewhat slow day, it can be as high as 300. It was hard but enjoyable and made a change from wrestling with the intricacies of Microsoft created software.
At ten o’clock the shutter came down and it was time for the real work, getting the kitchen spotless for the next day and cleaning the eating area. This took some ninety minutes at the end of which we were all regretting having to go to our normal jobs. Some did though, fortunately my conference call with the US was cancelled and I spent the afternoon working from home and trying not to doze off, somewhat unsuccessfully I might add.
I can’t begin to say how amazed I was at the permanent staff there as well as Lilija we were looked after by Ramesh and Sue, the manager as well as three or four others. They all work incredibly hard and I'm sure it’s not the best paid job in London.
At the end I felt like I do after a long session at the gym, very tired but extremely glad I’d done it.
The mission itself is grateful to receive donations, both cash and such items as clothes and disposable razors, there’s a full list on their site.
Besides being a sobering experience, there but for the grace of God go I etc., I now realise that small monetary gifts to homeless can help. You can be cynical and say that they will just waste that £1 on alcohol but you can’t know that, it could mean two hearty breakfasts.
So, despite the title of this post, office work being much, much easier, we are all signing up to do it again in the new year.
