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The Volunteering thread 2019


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Oxfam shifts, does anyone know wether they are already pre-determined and organised in advance or does your arrival time determine your shift pattern, i.e first x many to arrive get shift pattern 1 until full and then shift pattern 2 gets handed out until full etc?

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1 minute ago, mikegday said:

Oxfam shifts, does anyone know wether they are already pre-determined and organised in advance or does your arrival time determine your shift pattern, i.e first x many to arrive get shift pattern 1 until full and then shift pattern 2 gets handed out until full etc?

Pre determined. You can swap but need to arrange it yourself and have to swap all 3. Then tell them you've swapped

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3 minutes ago, philipsteak said:

Pre determined. You can swap but need to arrange it yourself and have to swap all 3. Then tell them you've swapped

Thanks. Yep no worries, was just starting to over think it and was worried our arrival time to registration was going to have some bearing on the shift pattern we are given.

I’d hate to know I was responsible for less than ideally shift times - I’d rather know it was down to pure luck. 

Edited by mikegday
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1 hour ago, crazyfool1 said:

Pre festival I would just like to thank everyone on this thread for making the festival what it is ... you guys are quite literally awesome ... hope you all have a cracking festival too CF x 

Same here, I'm packed and ready to head of to steward for Oxfam on Tuesday when just 3 days ago I didn't think I'd be going to Glastonbury.  You guys are amazing, thank you so much!  Hope everyone has the best festival ever xx

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On 6/22/2019 at 3:45 PM, MrZigster said:

We were told. Strictly. "You get three bits of luggage. Your tent, your sleeping bag, and your rucksack. That's it. The baggage compartment of the crew coach is only so big. If you bring slabs of beer, I WILL leave them by the side of the road".

Given that:

What type of shit are you going to put in your sleeping bag (in a malicious compliance type way)?

I'm thinking at least my airbed. That'll leave room for that box of CapriSun I just bought.

 

so how many show up at the London one ? - WBC London pick up - first one is at Noon tomorrow - there is five Coaches leaving at that time so that means there will be 250 bodies + so many others who have booked the 3pm coach and who will try to chance their arm.

I have been a Coach coordinator before and anyone who does not have a Noon booking is stuffed.Anyone who has excessive luggage is told to think again as there is just not enough room.

WBC ' in theory ' will attempt to split the large group into 50 bunches - My suggestion that each would have a coach and seat number tattooed on them were rejected - they now hand out a ticket but its very diffcult to work out ' in which order they are in the queue '

some coaches will stop - some don't - I do know that a few years ago when a coach stopped for a break - 50 left the coach and 48 got back on and no one had a clue who was missing so the coach departed.

I now know what happened to them - the missing two - walked on the wrong Coach ' and they failed to notice it was not typical volunteers and managers ' - the only time they worked out they were on the wrong coach is when they saw # Blackpool tower # as they were on a SAGA tour { so coach was full of OAP's } - they did get to Glasto but it took them a bloody long time to do it.

------------

anyway have a save journey down and I will be in touch with you when we are going for a wander.

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On 6/24/2019 at 8:57 AM, LeeHC said:

They really do have RFID chips this time! Jealous- will be on the road this time tomorrow!

So do the Oxfam workers have to scan their bands on entry to their campsite, and is this how they can get caught for not doing shifts?

 

I’ve always wondered how they manage working on the honour system, but the fear of being evicted on returning to camp would surely be one! Or is it purely a case of if they don’t, they lose their deposit and are black listed for future festivals?

 

congrats to those who managed to get in last minute!

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Back home after volunteering with oxfam this year after 5 years of having success in the ticket sales. Just wondering everyone’s thoughts? I’ve got to say it’s our first time volunteering and will be our last. We’re grateful for the fact that it came to our rescue when we failed in the ticket sales but the whole volunteering experience is just too much of a compromise. It doesn’t help that we got the shift pattern we least wanted, the shift patterns seem really unfair some miss hardly no music and some miss two days of music. The shift swap board was just full of our shift pattern and obviously no one was willing to swap onto ours. I thought the person doing the initial briefing was rude and kicked things off on a proper downer, telling everyone off like we were children for our apparent tardiness in attending the briefing (not true). Then there was the catering which was just chaotic and very unprepared. The long hike from the campsite (weather probably made this feeling longer) and finally the shifts were total over staffed. Standing there for over 8 hours when you’re missing music without a single task to do is soul destroying. The festival itself was amazing but oxfam volunteering is most definitely not for us, fingers crossed for ticket sale day!

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12 minutes ago, mikegday said:

Back home after volunteering with oxfam this year after 5 years of having success in the ticket sales. Just wondering everyone’s thoughts? I’ve got to say it’s our first time volunteering and will be our last. We’re grateful for the fact that it came to our rescue when we failed in the ticket sales but the whole volunteering experience is just too much of a compromise. It doesn’t help that we got the shift pattern we least wanted, the shift patterns seem really unfair some miss hardly no music and some miss two days of music. The shift swap board was just full of our shift pattern and obviously no one was willing to swap onto ours. I thought the person doing the initial briefing was rude and kicked things off on a proper downer, telling everyone off like we were children for our apparent tardiness in attending the briefing (not true). Then there was the catering which was just chaotic and very unprepared. The long hike from the campsite (weather probably made this feeling longer) and finally the shifts were total over staffed. Standing there for over 8 hours when you’re missing music without a single task to do is soul destroying. The festival itself was amazing but oxfam volunteering is most definitely not for us, fingers crossed for ticket sale day!

Sorry to hear you had a bad one.

yep, it looks like it was just luck in terms of what we got allocated.

I had a vehicle gate which was always busy, had the bonus of meeting bands/celebs and the eavii

unfortunately we had to deal with some messy incidents too, but it did make the shifts go quickly.

As for time to see bands - it was probably about 50% of normal but that did rely on very little sleep

knackered now - I'm going to do a smaller festival this year to know I've got a priority safety net for glastonbury next year, but if I can get normal tickets I will of course go that way

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5 minutes ago, not worthy said:

Sorry to hear you had a bad one.

yep, it looks like it was just luck in terms of what we got allocated.

I had a vehicle gate which was always busy, had the bonus of meeting bands/celebs and the eavii

unfortunately we had to deal with some messy incidents too, but it did make the shifts go quickly.

As for time to see bands - it was probably about 50% of normal but that did rely on very little sleep

knackered now - I'm going to do a smaller festival this year to know I've got a priority safety net for glastonbury next year, but if I can get normal tickets I will of course go that way

What shift pattern did you have? We had Thursday 5.45 - 14.00, Friday overnight 21.45 - 6.00, Sunday 13.45 - 22.00. Have the night shift and day shift during the music was killer. Wish we were one of the luckier ones with the early shift during music. We were on a ped gate and there were so many of us standing around. Also little things like no hot water visit on our night shift because it ran out before they got to our gate, it’s not hard to coordinate a tea run when you’ve got staff stood there all night! Had an absolute ball when off shift, I’ve just got to accept it’s either normal ticket or nothing for me because I’d be gutted to get the same shift pattern. 

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1 hour ago, mikegday said:

What shift pattern did you have? We had Thursday 5.45 - 14.00, Friday overnight 21.45 - 6.00, Sunday 13.45 - 22.00. Have the night shift and day shift during the music was killer. Wish we were one of the luckier ones with the early shift during music. We were on a ped gate and there were so many of us standing around. Also little things like no hot water visit on our night shift because it ran out before they got to our gate, it’s not hard to coordinate a tea run when you’ve got staff stood there all night! Had an absolute ball when off shift, I’ve just got to accept it’s either normal ticket or nothing for me because I’d be gutted to get the same shift pattern. 

I had the same shift pattern - very tiring doing night shift then getting only a couple of hours sleep due to the heat in tent before going out again through to 2am the following day, just relieved it was cooler for sleeping the next night/morning

There did seem to be too many stewards which caused the boredom for so many, I guess they just plan for a fair rate of drop-outs and those going AWOL

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5 hours ago, mikegday said:

I thought the person doing the initial briefing was rude and kicked things off on a proper downer, telling everyone off like we were children for our apparent tardiness in attending the briefing (not true).

Oxfam are very good at treating their volunteers, and in fact when they think they can get away with it punters, like children. Especially the older ones, who are normally supervisors, and think they have the same power as a security guard without the S.I.A license.

Very patronising and a bit pathetic to be honest.

Those briefings are very wearisome. Giving it the biggun about kicking any volunteers off site immediately if a drop of alcohol passes their lips on shift etc. Like your going to catch me out grandad :clapping:

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Yeah the briefing was ott, but I enjoyed my first experience with them. That being said, I was massively fortunate with my shift patterns and had no need to go near the swap board. That would have changed my experience definitely.

Found the atmosphere on shift to be better than expected, but probably down to luck again with the group I was in.

The night shift tho, freezing!

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First time Oxfam for me, would definitely do it again if I can't get tickets. Was lucky with my shifts though, weds day, Friday morning, sat night, so only band I missed was Saturday headliner. Absolutely loved being there Monday and Tuesday, Monday night was one of the best I've ever had there. Apart from working, the only downside was the walk from tent to the festival, was a good 10 minutes outside gate b, so no chance nipping back to the tent. Although having the car spitting distance from the tent almost made up for it. 

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6 minutes ago, mazola said:

First time Oxfam for me, would definitely do it again if I can't get tickets. Was lucky with my shifts though, weds day, Friday morning, sat night, so only band I missed was Saturday headliner. Absolutely loved being there Monday and Tuesday, Monday night was one of the best I've ever had there. Apart from working, the only downside was the walk from tent to the festival, was a good 10 minutes outside gate b, so no chance nipping back to the tent. Although having the car spitting distance from the tent almost made up for it. 

Having shifts like this would have made our experience completely different I reckon. Having that Sunday shift 2 - 10pm was really crap when you’ve also had a night shift on Friday too. But I get that it’s the luck of the draw, just don’t think we’d be prepared to go back for risk of getting the same.

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I was really lucky with my shifts; Wed early, Thurs overnight, Sat day. My group were great so the shifts were a good laugh. Clearly the great weather also helped. I imagine being on the passouts in the rain would be no fun at all.

The only gripe was that I was on Ped Gate D which adds pretty much an hour either side of the shifts for walking. The shuttle service was quite patchy so couldn't rely on that.

I enjoyed seeing a different side to the festival. If that was my only way in future I'd still do it if the alternative is not going at all. 

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First year volunteering for me this year doing loo crew. Positives were definitely seeing a different side to the festival - walking around worthy farm itself was a real treat - and I actually really enjoyed cleaning the shit up. We had two blocks in key pressure points and Thursday night was a horror shift. Otherwise they weren't too bad and we saw some truly hilarious sights, the sorts of thing you would normally put down as a festival urban myth. One had me and my mate laughing so much that I started crying, which attracted the attention of a father and his two boys, about 7-10, who I warned off saying that they didn't want to see it. 'Please dad, please can we look?!' He relented and about 15 seconds later the five of us were all howling with laughter. A real highlight of the festival. 

The main downside was definitely the organisation of our work. I don't want to bad mouth a charity (presumably everyone knows which one), so won't, but found their organisational skills incredibly lacking. Everyone else on our shift seemed to think the same. Some teams were told that their cleaning container had been lost and they didn't know where in the festival site it was. Other teams were asked to take on extra blocks of toilets when their shift started, despite the blocks being busy and out of the way. Being ordered where to camp (to the centimeter) also pissed off a lot of people. Despite arriving at the same time as each other, the group next to us were broken up, had my small tent put in the middle of them and as a result didn't get to camp together in the same way.

The worst offence was the hand sanitiser. It had run out by Thursday but they didn't know what time the delivery run was happening. It happened Sunday morning. With all of the hand sanitiser for every toilet on site being delivered to one cleaning container. Which was kilometers away from some blocks. Oh and each one weighs about 5kg, so for those less able carry that weight from one side of the site to the other that was great.

I think that 24 hours out of my festival may have been a bit much for me, but I made sure that as soon as I clocked off (and indeed before I clocked on) I was using that time for me - despite not being a runner one night I managed to get all of the way from worthy farm to scum for a band in under fifteen minutes. My mate that I did it with tended to have a shower, take some time to relax after the shift whereas I was a lot more willing to go straight out.

Would I do loo crew again? Maybe. I would be much more tempted to do recycling crew. We shared facilities with them and they seemed to be having a much better time than any of us. Especially grateful for the £3.50 pints. I might not get on with the starts that well, but having seen how much I can push the limits this year I would be willing to give it a shot. 

One more minor gripe is that every other team seemed to have their own 'Glastonbury Festival XXXXXX Crew 2019' whereas loo crew weren't given one. I would have been really happy to have paid for one of those but we weren't even offered the option. 

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48 minutes ago, giantkatestacks said:

There is a reason we moved from stewarding to litterpicking oh so many years ago. The work is much harder and the start very early but you don't miss any music and you aren't stood about doing nothing at times. Plus the leaders are great. 

What's the shift pattern for litter picking? 

I was lucky this year (my first time Oxfam stewarding at glasto) and I got the A shift pattern and all I missed that I really was desperate to see was Foals.  I thought the organisation of the oxfield and catering etc was fantastic and actually really enjoyed my shifts, it added to the festival rather than detracted from it.  I was on ped gate A when the gates opened Wednesday and saw Michael and Emily.. pennard hill gate overnight was busy and fun.. and a slower shift on ped gate B Saturday, but the supervisors were great at giving us all breaks from the sun (an upside of the overstaffing).  So I would 100% recommend Oxfam stewarding.. and will defo think about doing it again. But I can see that having one of the less helpful shift patterns would make it much less appealing.

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7 minutes ago, Pipine said:

What's the shift pattern for litter picking? 

It varies. But as a general rule of thumb it's either mornings or afternoons or ones that alternate. Some run Thursday to Sunday and some Friday to Monday. You get to choose which you would like in priority order (you may not always get your 1st choice) but you will know before you arrive. I always prefer mornings so don't miss bands in the afternoon but in my younger days would have probably chosen the alternating ones so could have a later night/early morning down in the SE corner. 

Edited by dondo
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3 minutes ago, dondo said:

It varies. But as a general rule of thumb it's either mornings or afternoons or ones that alternate. Some run Thursday to Sunday and some Friday to Monday. You get to choose which you would like in priority order (you may not always get your 1st choice) but you will know before you arrive. I always prefer mornings so don't miss bands in the afternoon but in my younger days would have probably chosen the alternating ones so could have a later night/early morning down in the SE corner. 

Ah..how many hours / shifts in total ?

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