Day 7 - Very Busy Schmozzle

Day 7 today and an afternoon shift.

I arrived at the village about an hour before the shift started so I wandered around watching welcoming ceremonies which are happening every hour on the hour today and Friday to try and get them all done before opening ceremonies.

One of the Supervisors, Jackie, was at the workforce check-in area early handing out deployment cards so my friend Magnus and I asked to be deployed to the Welcome Centre today as we both wanted to be out of the cold after yesterday's chilly shift.

We went to our morning briefing and were promptly deployed to the Team Welcome - this is when the 'schmozzle' started. Firstly, our team leader was a fellow who has possibly the worst leadership skills I have ever witnessed in my life. His customer service skills are horrific and his social skills are even worse!

Background: The Athletes Village is divided into two areas: the International Plaza and the Residential Area. The International Plaza is available for all accredited persons who have a code VL or VVL on their accreditation cards. This zone is where the media meet athletes, guests wander around etc. The Residential zone is where the athletes residential towers, dining hall, Salt Building, fitness centre, anti doping, security, etc are all located. Only persons with the codes VL, VVL, AND R on their accreditation tags are permitted in this zone. All of our supervisors are constantly reinforcing to us that by no means can ANYONE enter the 'R' zone without proper accreditation.

The main group that is constantly trying to enter the 'R' zone is the media and papparazi. Obviously they want photos of the celebrity athletes and access to the athletes for interviews.

Their are several access/entry gates to get into the village. Athletes can enter any gate. Guests, media and VIP must enter through the Guest Services gate located on the East side of the village by Science World.

I started my shift at 2:30 and was posted at the front of the Welcome centre where there was a steady stream of athletes arriving from Whistler and the airport. The transportation team was also dropping a lot of people off whom they were picking up at the airport. Most of these people were diplomats, media, dignitaries, heads of sport federations even royalty. These people were not supposed to be dropped off at the welcome centre but rather at the guest centre because their accreditation does not permit them to leave our welcome centre tent and enter the 'R' zone of the athletes village.

(I edited this as after writing it I felt that I shouldnt be so hard on volunteers, I will keep my own frustration of the issue to myself as I understand that everyone including myself has bad days. Basically the story invloved a Team Leader that didnt do his best work and it was a story about how myself and a few others problem solved on our own to rectify a bad situation.)

Anyway, I needed to rant a little about my day...it was interesting to say the least. All day long similar things were happening and the funny thing is, once we set the framework up for resolving issues of dignitaries showing up at our gate, my team leader used our model to solve the problems!

A fun day all in all.

I am off now for 3 days - a chance to watch the Opening Ceremonies on TV tonight and to start watching the actual competition this weekend. Ted and Lesley and I are going to head downtown tomorrow and tour through some of the many pavillions that have been set up.

Should be fun.