Mister Sixteen and the killing of TIME

Most of the time community service workers (individuals paying a debt to society rather than paying a fine with cold, hard, cash) get a bad reputation for being difficult to work with. I've found that to be not true. I've trained some great community service workers and they've been wonderful additions to our staff.

Typically to volunteer people will have to fill out an application and attend a volunteer orientation. If a potential volunteer can get through that (it's not like it's taking the SAT's for Cripes sake) then the person aught to be a decent volunteer.

However that's not always the case. This guy saunters into one of my orientations 20 minutes late and I knew, just knew, this guy was going to be trouble. He hands me his application, I look it over and notice that he didn't sign it. I ask him how old he is, wanting to make sure he's over 14 years of age and then ask him to sign his application. He looks at me dully and puts the number 16 where his signature goes. After orientation I arrange a day and time for him to come in for training. Later in the day I call his house because I need to change the day and time due to a conflicting appointment and speak to his mom. According to mommy dearest she was going to contact me anyway regarding his training schedule because of the time of day. I guess her precious baby boy can't focus so early in the morning and that TEN THIRTY in the morning would be too early. WTF! I can't believe I didn't nip that in the bud right then. However I have to follow through and give him a fighting chance. I arranged for an afternoon training time so he could "focus" and paired him with Reiko as his trainer. Mister Sixteen wanders in...late...and Reiko promptly starts him with Adult Fiction. Adult Fiction is pretty darn easy. Shelvers arrange the books in alphabetical order by authors last name. It's the a...b...c...'s for cripes sake. This guy goes through and stuffs bunches of books on his cart in the general area and says he's done. When we correct him he says dude I'm just killing time....well I said you're not killing time here. Then I found out that he's already been kicked out of the Charitable organization up the street. What a loser...