Place: Victoria Baths
Date: 12 July 2011
Hours worked: 5 hours
We arrived at the Baths and were let in by Martin, who is our sort of supervisor. He led us into the cafe and explained to us what we would be doing that day while serving us coffee, tea, or water. After finishing our drinks, he led us into the female pool area and showed us the different areas that needed cleaning. We then went down to the basement and geared up, donning white body suits, gloves, and some put face masks on as well. We started by mopping the floor in the changing stalls and the area around the pool, took a short ten minute break, then proceeded to scrubbing the walls. After that, we got an hour long lunch break and some went to a restaurant and some went back to their flats to eat. At two, we all gathered together back at the baths and continued our work. Cecilia, Paige, and myself mopped the upstairs of the men's 2nd class pool, about 3 times then we each took a turn at the power floor mop. After that, we were finished for the day.
I started the day feeling nothing but tired. We had stayed up late talking the night before and I had not got much sleep, nor had I slept well, so waking up that early was quite difficult. The tea with sugar and milk helped wake me up and give me a bit of energy, as well as when we took the quick break and I ate a clementine. I did get a bit irriated when I saw some people not really doing any real work at all while we were working really hard, but then sucked it up because I realized that would reflect on them and I did not need to worry about it. I was starving by the time our lunch break came around, so when we got back to our flat I rummaged through the fridge and just ate until I was satisfied. When we got back, I was a little bored while working simply because in the men's 2nd class, we could not hear the music that Martin was playing so it was just quiet in there. When we finished with that, I would say that I was in a playful, maybe a bit hyper mood because by then I had a lot of pent up energy from not really doing much, so I tried to help Cecilia with the floor mop but I couldn't quite do it right. By the time we left, I was content to simply go home and work on my journal and relax a little bit. I did acquire some new knowledge, however; I had never scrubbed at tiles before or really mopped either, my sister always did that and I would do the polish afterwards. The mopping really didn't seem to do much since it looked almost exactly the same afterwards as it did beforehand, but the dirty water proved otherwise. Also, I had never used the power mop before even though i had always wanted to, but proved I was no good at it.
I would say that the behavoir of cooperation was applied during this time volunteering because even though I'm sure none of us were too keen on actually doing the physical labor aspect, we did it anyways because it counts for our class grade and I think after a bit, we discovered that helping clean was very self-gratifying; it felt good to know we were helping out so much even though it did not seem like we were doing much, Martin and Neil and the others seemed to be very happy with our work. Also, I believe we really felt the sense of community that Victoria Baths wants to show their surrounding area by all coming together to work.
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