Being a Volunteer
Every time I saw the people wearing in red waistcoat(The clothes on which is
dramatically printed VOLUNTEER on the back in Chinese), working absorbedly with
smiles, I could not help saying to myself , "If only I could be once!". Not until a couple of weeks ago had I got much information about it through website. On
that website, there is a column named Volunteer and anyone can feel free to post
whatever he likes related to volunteer. Browsing an activity for supporting Shenzhen Book City would be held on last Sunday, I enrolled in with no hesitation and could hardly wait to be.
Finally here came the day! Around 14:00, twelve volunteers timely gathered in
front of gate of Book City. One of the leaders, a fashionable boy and an editor
engaged in that website, gave us a totem each hanging on our coat and told us something about what we should pay attention to, such as “Keep appearance! No chatting!”. The other leader allotted the main tasks: Partly to help cash clerks
with putting the books into plastic packages on counters, lest the customers would queue up long; the rest to tidy the books on the shelves providing convenience for readers to find whatever they need. After being told what we should do, we
walked to the right bearing joyfully.
I was arranged to tidy the books for middle school students. It seemed a piece of cake but actually it was much tougher than I had thought. Some readers are
too short to touch the top floor of the shelves. They could get the books they
needed by standing on tiptoe or lending a warm hand but they were unwilling to put the books back in the same way, throwing them on the shelves where they could
straightly reach. What's worse was lots of the readers paid no attention to where the books they got from, only to the books and with a result, many books were
wrongly placed and if untidy shortly, the shelves would be in a mess, even few
books was disorderly thrown on the floor. On average, it took me 3-4 minutes to
rightly place one book and occasionally I failed to do so I had to put them into
the plastic cases prepared by administrants.
For the whole afternoon, I have been rushing between several shelves to make
sure every shelf was as tidily as possible. While it was tiring to tidy the books, I was quite glad, especially in my heart. By being a volunteer, not only have
I personally practiced how hard the job involved in service is, but have learned that readers should be aware of they have a sense of responsibility to put the
books they have read on the right place, in order to bring about convenience for others as well as themselves.
Nicole
