Sunday Oct 20 Again
Now it’s 10PM and I’m back in my hotel room. Plans have changed again. I stayed up til breakfast then slept til almost 5PM and then got a call telling me that I’m no longer on night shifts and I’m no longer assigned to the Mega-Shelter. Now I’m going to a shelter at a Hard Rock Cafe and casino. I thought that shelter was shutting down because an operating casino is not an appropriate place to be sheltering families. They must need me to help shut it down. We are supposed to be there at 7AM tomorrow. I have a feeling I will get there and they will have already shut down and I’ll just have to come back out here again.
I just want to feel useful and I’m not getting that. I came here to help people and I took time off work, like 11 work days that I don’t get paid for (update: not actually true. My job insisted that they pay me for this time.) and they’re just spending a bunch of donated money to keep me in hotel rooms and drive me in rental cars back and forth never to actually have me do anything.
One thing I don’t understand about this whole operation is why we don’t just have a big Slack server for the whole operation. If I was running the Red Cross, I would require every chapter to have their own Slack server and have a list of required channels and some basic standards of how and where to post info. Then on a deployment, everyone should be required to check in to the local Slack server and then there could be channels for everything. People could figure out their assignments and create channels to coordinate all types of operations. Instead we rely on calls and text messages. There is a little automation, like every couple days I get an email saying “we see you do not have a car. If this is incorrect and you do have a rental car, please contact us”. But if you’re gonna run this like an anarchist, then give the people the tools they need to figure out solutions on their own. All we really need is a big Slack server with a bunch of reasonably organized channels, and an expectation that we use that as our central communication hub.
Also today housekeeping came into my room while I was asleep and cleaned my whole bathroom before I got up in my underpants and shooed her out. She had headphones in and I had earplugs in so I didn’t hear her and she didn’t hear me. It’s like this whole trip is cursed to be one silly confusion after another. So a lot of the confusion is not at all Red Cross’ fault. I had forgotten to put out the do not disturb sign.
Another thing is apparently there was a huge rumor going around that Red Cross was giving out $750 checks to basically anyone who walked into a shelter with a sob story about having to evacuate their house. Right by the hotel in Miami there was this scary looking house that had all these bars on the windows and security and a giant sign that said something like “Kamala Harris can shove her $750 up her ass” so I’m guessing out my ass that was someone who heard the rumor and believed it and was so hateful toward the idea of people in need getting government aid and maybe even knew Red Cross was all staying a block from his house. Why can’t people think and verify before they flip out? Apparently there were so many people coming in and asking for their $750 that we had to put up big signs explaining it’s just a hoax. That kind of shit is obviously not our fault.