My London Journey

I suppose that I'm cheating somewhat calling this post my 'London' journey since I was actually based at Hampden Park in Glasgow during the 2012 Olympics, as the picture gives away!

For those interested in how I got involved and what being part of such a huge event was like, I'll give you a little run down of my experiences.

The Application

Like all good stories, my tale begins on a bus....or maybe I'm getting confused with some entirely different genres of stories. Alas, like it or lump it, my Olympic journey had the humble origins of starting while I had my big backside parked on a bus. We had pulled up at some lights and the bus pulled up in front had an advert for Gamesmaker applications. I was no stranger to volunteering so it caught my eye and I made a mental reminder to go home and look up the web link.

I filled in my application, not entirely sure what all the 'Functional Areas' actually meant. I remember putting down Uniforms as one of my choices mainly due to the fact that I was entirely sure that I had a good idea of what Uniforms volunteers might be doing on a day to day basis. I wasn't hugely bothered about volunteering and so I didn't wait with baited breath but one day an email arrived in my inbox inviting me to interview for 'Workforce Operations'.

Luckily, interview dates were not only available down in London and there was an interview event being held in the Science Centre in Glasgow and so I booked a date and a time and then got on with my life.

The Interview

As the interview date drew near I began to feel a little bit nervous and concerned. After all, I hate interviews. I never manage to get through an interview without saying at least one stupid thing and I'm never quite sure whether this is normal or just me. Maybe interview marking scripts have a little box that the interviewer can tick once the candidate has had their mandatory stupid thing said and out the way or maybe I'm just socially awkward. One or the other.

Interviews, in general, are not good.....even less so when you are being interviewed for the mysterious 'Workforce Operations'. I wasn't entirely sure of what 'Workforce Operations' entailed and was even less sure of what my role was. How was I going to fluff an interview about it?

Eventually I decided that I could do with the interview practice if nothing else and traipsed to the Science Centre to face the music. I was a tad early (maybe about 10 mins) and expected to just be ushered through to a holding area but was told instead to wait outside. Off I went to loiter in the foyer in my spectacularly socially awkward fashion. At that point another girl was also sent away to loiter and we started chatting. It turned out she was from the same small town outside Glasgow as me and we knew some people in common so that helped still the nerves.

Finally, we were called in. Firstly, we were handed colour coded wrist bands depending on what batch we were in. Ours were blue but there were other colours. We got to keep these as souvenirs and the man who gave us ours said we could come and swap it for another colour on the way out if we wanted. However, I had lost interest in what he was saying at this point as I'd been distracted by the huge mountain of Cadbury chocolates piled into a cardboard display. It was then that I heard the magic words, "have as many as you want." 

Of course, I had to be polite so limited myself to 2 and went to get my photo taken and ID checked before being ushered into a holding area that had information on the various sports and the layout of the Olympic Park. I noticed another mountain of chocolate in this room and so strategically positioned myself close enough to it to be able to surreptitiously grab a few chocolates but not close enough to be putting myself at serious risk of ending up in a diabetic coma.

Eventually we were taken into a cinema room to watch a motivational bit of footage that featured a lot of Eddie Izzard and a bit of Seb Coe before being taken for our interviews. Dun dun DUNNNNNN!

As we milled out like cattle, frantically searching for which pod to go into while interviewers stood around frantically searching for their candidate to take into their pod, I silently prayed for a woman. My social awkwardness usually manages to keep itself to almost unnoticeable level when I'm interviewed by a woman. I feared that a male interviewer might make me turn into a less intelligent and articulate version of Sheldon Cooper. Alas, a smiley faced man came out to guide me into a pod and thus the interview began.

And........it wasn't actually all that bad. The interviewer was very friendly and the questions quite non-threatening. The 'pod' had clearly been set up to make it not intimidate potential candidates and I left feeling that I didn't actually mind if I ended up with a role or not as I'd genuinely enjoyed the experience. I'd asked specifically if I could be based at Hampden and told that it probably wouldn't be a possibility as a lot of people wanted based at a venue more local to them. With that, I was shown the way out via a big wall where you could write a message and a small merchandise stall.

The Wait

The vast numbers of people being interviewed did mean a long wait for potential volunteers and it was a bit worrying at times as obviously, if I were successful, I wanted to be able to arrange transport to London and accommodation but eventually the email came through. I was accepted as a Workforce Operations Team Member at Hampden Park (and, in case you were wondering, I still didn't really have a clue as to what that meant)!

Preparation

Luckily, all my training was in Glasgow and so I didn't have to fork out for transport to London at all. The first training event was Orientation and it was held in Glasgow Royal Concert Hall. This event was really about getting the volunteers fired up and enthused for the event ahead. There was lots of videos, music, energy and the whole thing was presented by Olympian Jonathon Edwards. We were given a workbook with information which was very general and sometimes a little bit patronising.

Later came the more detailed training events of Role Specific and Venue Specific training. Both of these were squeezed into the same day for me at Hampden which was quite handy. We were given a guided tour of the venue and given some more general training (eg. on signing the alphabet and on being politically correct and helpful). As I say, some of the training was a little bit unnecessary and obvious but I suppose they have to cover their bases. Finally, I began to be given a bit of insight into my role. Workforce Operations signed people in for their shifts, assigned everyone their relevant food vouchers for lunch or dinner, did a spot of troubleshooting if someone turned up for a shift but wasn't on the system as being needed, made up newsletters and was responsible for giving out rewards to the volunteers. You'll never guess what the BEST part of our role was, though......we were in charge of the chocolates supplied by Cadbury! It was like I'd died and gone to heaven..........why they emailed me to say I was getting a role as Workforce Operations Team Member, I'll never know! They should just have said I was "Chocolate Distribution Volunteer" and I'd have been all over that thing!

An Unexpected Email 

About 2 months before the Games, I received an email saying they were short of people to volunteer at the Uniforms Distribution centre based at Hampden and asking if I would be willing to do it as an additional role. I jumped at the chance and I'm so glad I did!

The Uniforms Experience

There wasn't a huge amount of uniforms being given out at Hampden so it wasn't a huge operation but we did start a few weeks before the Games just to give everyone time to come in and fetch their uniform. As uniforms team, we were given our uniforms before everyone else so we could look as smart as carrots on our first shifts. It was a very exciting moment! We were given 2 t-shirts, a jacket, 2 pairs of trousers, 2 pairs of socks, a baseball cap, a pair of trainers, a watch, a notepad and pen, a bag and an umbrella all in that fetching purple and scarlet combo that I'm sure you've all seen!

Since the uniforms team started a good few weeks pre-games, it was great to get to see the stadium change and take shape. When we first arrived, there was no security. We could just walk in and walk along to Uniforms (which was at the top of the stadium steps). Over the period leading up to the games we saw more security added all the time, we saw the pitch being fixed and new goalposts being installed and we saw branding being taken down, hidden or changed. Of course, we also got to see excited faces tackling the stadium steps, biting at the bit to get their uniforms and then we also got to see most of them trundling off down the steps again holding their box by the handle despite warnings from us that it wasn't very sturdy! There were a fair few burst open boxes before the bottom of the steps were reached!

The team were great and we had so much fun! We were never very busy and so we had to find ways to entertain ourselves. It started off fairly mundane. Our boss would bring in a Kinder egg toy and hide it every day and the first person to find it won some chocolate. Someone brought in a jigsaw and we wrote up our own personal Bucket List on the wall. However, it didn't take long before things descended into something slighter closer to anarchy! Soon we were improvising a mini olympics using anything that we had to hand (some plastic chains served as skipping ropes, for example) and one particularly slow afternoon we were challenged by the uniforms team down south to see who could make the best paper plane out of cardboard. They sent us a picture of their piddly little paper plane and we ended up making a ship out of empty cardboard boxes that was about 8 foot long which a mast about 4 foot high. My personal favourite time killer, though, was our flash mob rendition of Paul Simon's "You Can Call Me Al". We all made heads out of cardboard boxes for some reason and then the tallest and shortest of us (me being the shortest!) took on the lead roles of Paul Simon and Chevy Chase while everyone else danced around on the stadium steps.

The Workforce Ops Experience

All good things must come to an end, I suppose. The days of uniforms ended and the games themselves rolled around. Turning up for my first Workforce Ops shift was a bit of a shock! Suddenly things were very full on! Full security was in place including security checks, x-ray machines, soldiers....the works! We had our own little office set up with computers and we had to scan the accreditation passes of volunteers, check they were on rota, mark them in and then give them lunch or dinner vouchers if they needed it. It wasn't the most exciting job but someone had to do it. Once the rush was over we would make some newsletters and distribute them in the canteen.

We handed out the reward items to each team at the start of the games with the managers being told what days each items had to be given out (we had some very cool rewards such as an engraved relay baton at the end of the games)!

Again, I was a member of a lovely (but small) team and we all got on really well with each other. We also popped over to Accreditation which was nearby when we got a bit bored but a major benefit of ours was that we had keys to an executive box in case any of the workforce had a meltdown and needed some time away from it all or in case anyone needed a prayer room. Since it was rarely used our manager used to let us take it in turns on match days to head up there and watch a bit of the game and soak up some of the atmosphere so I was lucky to catch a fair bit of the action.

What about the chocolate, I hear you cry.........

The Terrible Tale of the Hampden Chocolate

Day 1: There was no chocolate. This was a terrible thing to happen, of course, and our manager set out to see that it was quickly rectified. However, it ended up being a bit of a complicated task for him! It turned out there had been a problem with the dry storage facilities which had delayed the delivery of the chocolate and it wasn't due to come until much further on in the games. Unfortunately for us, since we only had a few match days, it was due to arrive on the very last match day!

But arrive it did.

Our manager found us buckets and tasked us with getting rid of as much of the boxes and boxes and boxes and boxes of chocolate as we possibly could in a single day! However, the buckets frightening people off making them think we were after donations of money! No one wanted our delicious, creamy, sugary, delicious chocolate....what a shame!

We did manage to get rid of some of it and eventually developed a tactic of approaching the police and the soldiers and filling their pockets with the delicious goodness as they couldn't run away when they noticed us coming at them with buckets. However, a good deal of that chocolate did end up coming home with all us volunteers......well, it would have been a shame for it to go to waste!

The Aftermath

I made some good friends and have kept in contact with a few. When I heard there was going to be a big street reception for the Scottish athletes at George Square in Glasgow, I contacted one of the uniforms team members and asked if she wanted to go. We met for lunch and then headed over to George Square. The volunteers had been told to come in uniform as a special area had been marked off for them to stand in but we ended up just standing with the crowd. The atmosphere was electric and the crowd went wild when Chris Hoy appeared on stage!

When myself and Rusne headed off home at the end, though, a very strange thing happened. Suddenly we had people surrounding us. Some wanted to shake our hands, some wanted to chat to us about our experiences, some wanted to get pictures taken with us but everyone was very thankful for the time we'd given to the Olympics. It was very touching and strange. I've volunteered many times in the past and of course I don't do it for thanks although it is nice to get it but generally your efforts go largely unnoticed except by other volunteers or people closely related to a project. This was the first time I'd been swamped by strangers wanting to thank me for the time I'd given......I really should have told them I'd essentially been paid for my time in chocolate!