Volunteering

I work at a pretty incredible company the mission is to help folks live a better life. Not by giving them more money but more opportunities. We are a very diverse company there are way over 25 languages spoken there and we help team members learn English, with on site classes, there are  many computer labs so folks can go and learn how to use them and the internet. We have an internet cafe on site for those who want to check e-mails, surf the web, play games etc.  They serve fresh fruit to all employees everyday free. We have many handicap people, its nothing to see dogs walking around helping their owners.  We train team members so they can move up in the company or move on to better jobs.  We have hot lunches everyday from the cafeteria that is run by a Sue Chef. The team members can get there taxes done free we have an exercise room with all the equipment you need and showers .The company pays everyone to be healthy. Like 9$ a pay check to not smoke you can earn over 30 bucks a paycheck by staying healthy, we have health screenings every year and they offer flue shots,  The list of things is endless and we are Green company to boots.  We have a farm were we grow our own vegetables for the cafeteria  and we have garden plots for team members to grow there own veggies and they can go out on breaks and pull weeds or water them.    We offer cooking classes once a month to teach people how to cook healthy and cheep meals.These things can all be done during the day while they are work,  The list go on and on.  Now staff get a yearly bonus and we must do things to get the bonus. All of these things go directly to the good of our team members and our community,  Once a quarter staff must volunteer to help our mission. So over the years I have done some interesting things through this volunteering.  Serve food, clean up after company functions, Played and Elf at Christmas, pulled weeds, cleaned up planters along the down town streets, Worked at recycle events dragging electronic stuff out of cars as they pull up, helping with tax preparation.Helping with the flu shot day. and that list goes on.  So today was my key indicator day where I have to do volunteer time.  My boss told me I could help in the kitchen getting food ready for the cooking demonstration tomorrow. So one of my co workers and I head off to the kitchen were we think we are going to make sandwiches or something benign.  We arrive to find we will be cutting up chicken for Fajitas. The butterflied filet chicken breast were frozen and we had to slice them so small it was like shaving them to make long slivers of chicken and filling baggies with them. We slivered over 100 frozen chicken breast, which equals 100 chickens. I am going to need therapy on my wrist and shoulders. Not to mention the frost bite. This was by far the worst 1.5 hours I have done doing volunteer work in the past 14 years.  My fingers are swollen and I have a blister on my index finger where it connects to the hand.  I was trying to get the pressure of the knife more centered and the top of the metal blade kept rubbing my finger The other hand hurts like hell as I was trying not to saw the damn things just push down on the top of the blade with the other hand, Both options have left me almost crippled.  At one point I see my co worker and the chicken in her baggies looks so nice and straight in the bags.  Where my first handful went in nice and neat but the second handful is now thawing and picking it off the cutting board makes getting into the bag difficult so I was cramming the second handful in the bag.  I started stressing over this and then I thought am I doing this right maybe I am suppose to use one of the butterfly filet counting each side as one, I asked if we were using two filet and she said yes. So I decided to not stress over the neatness I mean its going to be cooked and ate who cares how it looks in the bag. We counted our bags and we thought we were with in 10 bags of our 50 we needed.  When we ask for clarification on what two meant. We were not even close because the two meant two butterfly filets to a bag which meant two chickens per bag. Needles to say our excitement at being almost finished diminished quickly. We kept making jokes about what we did and had to do so that helped keep our minds off the pain in the rest of our upper bodies.
Typing sucks and I will be begging the girls for a back message tonight. Now I have to admit cutting them frozen did make them easier to cut and make them more uniform in size but Damn why didn't they use the slicer. I will be sure to pick my volunteer hours better in the future.