#25 My Last Day

Today was my last day. A day of paperwork and a lot of running around. I had to turn in my phone, but that would be the last thing to do, In the meantime, I would redirect the checkout of my ARC computer so that Boss could continue to use it, and proceed with a lot of other checkouts. I finished the report off, made copies and handed it in. At lunch, I went to the mall, bought cds and sleeves, then returned. In between checking out of departments and finishing my final paperwork, I somehow managed to burn cd copies of all of the pictures that I had taken while I was in Louisiana. One for each person in the department, along with a sheet of paper containing everyone's name address phone # and birthday.

"Tandeleo" asked if I was on speed or something. Coming from the original wild woman, I had to laugh. One by one, I said goodbye to everyone. Went back to CLS and said my goodbyes there, avoiding the bad cookies who even under threat, wouldn't touch me with someone else's ten foot pole. In between I finished more paperwork.

I believe I have stated it before, but the ARC fells entire forests to fulfill its paperwork requirements. It is one of the most archaic processes that I have ever gone through, but then I am both self employed and the boss. I have never been subjected to arcane processes and rituals in my real life. Of course I thought of twenty different ways to streamline this silly inefficient process and fifty different ways that the Red Cross would try to thwart me or anyone else who tried to change their dumb-ass process so that it was logical, or at least up to date. Thinking about it made me laugh and it pissed me off.

After, lunch. Which once again was made from a selection of cheetos, fig newtons and other donated trash food ever available in the canteen. We had one variety of fruit per day, so I pretty much lived on that before dinner as I didn't take lunch breaks except once when I went to a local restaurant called "Betty's Sweet Potato". The usual fruit provided by the ARC canteen was apples. One time, eating all of those apples made me think of Eve. Then it made me think of snakes....lol...then I started to think that maybe I was working for some of them.

Once the canteen tried to pass off that crappy canned water on the volunteers. What a laugh. the whole vat of those nasty white Anhauser Busch cans just sat there floating in the ice all day. Unsuspecting newbies would grab one, open it and take a swig. The resulting grimacing and spitting were hilarious. Into the trash the full cans went. We could have at least used that water to wash something, and I guess while we were at it, we should have recycled the cans....sigh.

Speaking of "what were they thinking", I finally got around to the mental health part of my check out. I waited with others outside of the cubicles where the mental health workers were giving their e-valls,(evaluations). FInally my name was called. I turned and was greeted by a truly strange and singular person. My....uh.... "mental health evaluator". Stunned though I was, she did manage to lead me into one of the sealed off cubicles that were reserved for the purpose of questioning the departing volunteers. I do not for the life of me remember the actual name of the "mental health professional" that checked me out that day. She and her appearance wiped the possibility of any other memory clean out of my head.

I will call her "Rhonda", just for clarity's sake. "Rhonda at 5'4" was average. The mousey brown hair which she wore with a headband to tuck it back was average too, except that it was dirty. The hair that is. Oh..the headband too. Her smock was dirty, as was her dress, except that it wasn't really a dress, it was a slip. Not a slip-dress, a slip. A dirty somewhat transparent slip. It was purple. Over that, "Rhonda" wore her red cross smock. That was really dirty. She sported torn stockings and with those wore ruby slippers. Yeah, you read that right. ruby slippers. The kind with the cheap glue-on spangles, only the shoes had seen better days and the spangles were falling off in several places.

"Rhonda" wore glasses. The cat-eye kind from the fifties. As if that picture was not enough, tucked into the pocket of her dirty ARC smock was a small stuffed tiger. The tiger had an official ARC badge with an official ARC number, and an official ARC photo on it...... of the tiger. "Rhonda asked me if I would like a hug? I declined. She then took the tiger out of her pocket pushed it towards me and asked if I would like to give the tiger a hug. I wondered if this was a test?

Ok, we had now established that the ARC "mental health professional" was officially or otherwise insane. What to do? Who was evaluating whom? You think I am kidding, but put yourself in my place. This fruit loop wanted me to hug her stuffed toy tiger that she had given a name and procured an official ARC ID badge for. If I didn't hug the tiger was I going to be evaluated as mentally deficient? If I did hug the tiger was I going to be evaluated as mentally deficient? We had already established that at least in some circles, working for the Red Cross might have established me as mentally deficient, but did I really want to confirm that?

In the end I did not hug the tiger, but I did think about it. Rhonda continued her evaluation, leaning towards me like Michelle Pfeiffer (yeah yeah...so you know how to spell it...who cares?), in that horror movie with Harrison Ford, intoning in a very low voice, asking if I had, " been disssturbed by anyyything I had sssseeeeen?" Well.....there was her, and Slidell, and the thunderingly inefficient and abusive way that the ARC was being run, but then I couldn't exactly say that now could I? I hesitated, but replied, "not really". She pressed, hissingly, "but ssssurely, there were ssssome thingsss that upssset yoooou?" Again, she was upsetting me now, but I sucked it up and again replied, "no, nothing that I can think of".

She leaned back suddenly, cocking her head like a dog. Tucking in her chin and raising her eyebrows she then asked, " and why do you think that isssss?" Turning her head even more sideways and cocking it to the other side as she ended the sentence. Think the nurse in "Young Frankenstein". What went through my head was, Wellllll...the system and resulting situation that the government and the ARC has created for volunteers and evacuees was blatently out of control, and had passed dangerous, about a month ago, but that somehow this fiasco was all being treated as: 1. normal, 2. par for the course, or 3.Huh? Is something wrong? Looks ok to me........ So where do I start? Or do I start? I will start, but not with her. I tell her that my nonplus is probably because I live in Los Angeles. Interestingly, that seemed to explain it to her.

Somehow I made it through what was surely the stupidest interview done by the looniest toon I have encountered in recent memory. As I left, she looked at me, smiled and said,"here, let Sam,(or whatever she called the damn thing), hug you. She then proceeded to assault me with her tagged stuffed tiger. I assume she put every volunteer mustering out through the same ordeal. Where the hell do the ARC find these people??? Did anyone finally turn on her and shove the damn Tiger head first into the trash? Or elsewhere? Was she ever caught and returned to the ward that she had apparently escaped from? I will never know.

Finally went over to transfer my phone, and saw boxes of discarded phones. Not just one or two, but close to 100 or so. These were phones that were going to be thrown out as they were useless. Some were broken, but most had answering messages that had their official codes changed by the user against policy, which rendered them useless to some extent to the next volunteer as with an unknown code, messages on those phones could not be retrieved. You would have thought that after all of those weeks of dummies changing the codes, some other dummy would have figured out to check the dang code on each phone before the last user disappeared. You would have thought.

Other than that, I was ordered to go to an ATM to take out $150 to pay for all of the extras that I was forced to purchase for my volunteer time. We were told to bring the most unbelievably stupid things, most of which I never used. Hey...they were stupid. Like high rubber boots when it hadn't been wet or even rained for weeks. Paper, office supplies and pens. Baton Rouge had enough office supplies to open its own Office Depot for crying out loud. Many of the stupid required purchases just sat in my suitcase for the duration, taking up space and weight. One chapter actually had their volunteers lug gallons of water with them. Other chapters had equally moronic requirements. There was no organization, continuity or consistency. Heck, there was no accurate information on the situation in Louisiana for that matter. It was an Emperor has new clothes situation through and through.

Although I believe my chapter and others did their best with the pointless directions they were given by the National office, at no time during my deployment was I even near anything larger than my own suitcase that needed lifting. The initial requirement at my chapter was that I had to be able to repeatedly lift 50 to 100 pounds,remember? Where did these guys get their information from? What a waste of everyone's time, what a waste of donated money. If it wasn't such a tragedy all around, you would have laughed out loud at the sheer foolishness.


Speaking of money, I had loads left on my ARC issued credit card when I went to check out. I had paid for many of my meals myself as a further contribution. The volunteers at the checkout desk were surprised, especially because of the number of days that I had been there. I wondered if somehow the Rockefellers had volunteered for the ARC, and were somewhere running up their ARC cards eating quail on toast points at the RC's expense or something. Perhaps some did, but I did not have that many expenses. I turned in my card there as the financial volunteer requested. He did give me some cash to get home from the airport with and catch a cab, so that was a nice touch.

So that was it, I was out! Not so fast....Before the day was over, Big Daddy would wring out of me every drop of volunteerism, do-gooding, fixingit, filling in, writing and organizing that he could possibly stuff in or drag out during my sorry self in my remaining hours. He even got Boss in on the act. There was still loads of work to do. They were going to miss me. Hell, I was going to miss them.

Apparently, the joint was breaking up. Some were staying in Baton Rouge, another contingent was being sent to New Orleans. There were different official disaster #'s to learn and official papers to go through. The ARC hadn't screwed up Baton Rouge nearly enough, they were now on to screw up New Orleans. I was asked if I would like to stay on and head a department in New Orleans. I actually would have if I had the time, but I had a home and a child to go back to, companies of my own to run and things of my own to fix. Maybe later.

Daddy and Boss had written my evaluation. They had recommended me for a management position. They had written glowingly of me, singing my praises in writing. It must have been the stress of the situation...lol. I in turn, told only the truth and said what great guys they were to work with. Silly Geese.

We ended the day with Daddy, Boss and I decided to go to dinner one last time. I don't remember everything, but I think that "Jaqui" may have tagged along. I do remember that it took forever to get to the place, and the dinner was in a nice restaurant. We ordered steak and such and each had one glass of wine to toast with. Which we paid for ourselves of course, as the ARC rightfully so, does not pay for alcohol, drugs or firearms. Probably for the best. We all hugged good night.

The restaurant had been at the end of the Baton Rouge earth, so it took me a good long while to get back to my shelter. As I entered, it was quiet. "Bob" had transferred so no snoring, and besides, there was almost no one left. I stayed up a while writing, and went to sleep after the alien barreled through the pipes one last time.I would leave tomorrow.