Well, I did my night shift at Crisis Open Christmas. I have to say first: most of the people there were doing several nights. My "one night stand" there hardly counts. I am a lightweight. . . .
A brief introduction to "Centre 3 nightshift":
The building was organised into five floors, broadly speaking:
Ground - gatekeeping and stores
1 - food
2 - television
3 - quiet sleeping
4 - volunteers private area.
It was run by three "Green badges", Matthew James and Karen, with a kitchen crew, a small Red Cross team of four, and about fifty volunteers ranging from highly experienced all the way down to me (first night). There were 164 "guests" that night.
The Green badge people have a system -- they've done this many times before -- and as far as I can see it works. I always had the feeling that the person telling me what to do wasn't just making it up there and then. One part of the system is safety in numbers: never be out of sight of other volunteers, always move around the building in pairs, and so on.
Most of the work really consisted of watching and listening to guests.
I spent a while in the sleeping section at the start handing out pillows and blankets as people arrived, and negotiating with people who were asking politely / demanding / just taking extra pillows (of which we were a bit short). Then I spent about 4 hours on trying to keep the marble floor in the gents from getting too wet and slippery, and listening to some of the more talkative guests who seemed to gather in the main corridor outside the toilets. Then a couple of hours sitting in the warm, dark, television area struggling to keep awake by watching a Jackie Chan movie and drinking coffee. And then a very bracing time on the gate (i.e. out in the street) watching the sun come up, checking people in and out as they went for their tobacco or alcohol fixes (not allowed in the building).
A few things I find worthy of remark. First, it's another example of the big difference between being given instructions on what to do and not to do, and actually being able to act on them. Only when you "get" things instinctively (rather than just "understand") do they really work. It's like driving a car in that respect, or lots of other things. There were several times I found myself starting automatically to do exactly the thing they'd warned us not to do... for example, if some conflict starts to develop, acting like an audience. I understood not to do that, but didn't get it at first.
It's also interesting how people sleep. A lot of people preferred to sleep in the brightly lit corridors where people were moving around, or in the TV area (fairly dimly lit but noisy and lots of movement) rather than in the quiet dark sleeping area. I can see why. If I'd been going to sleep, I'd have chosen the TV area every time.
The moral of the story, if there is one, is that it brings home the lesson that we are not so different from them. The guests get clean clothes when they arrive, the volunteers dress in their rough clothes, and from that point on, you can only tell them apart by the badges and wristbands. If we took our badges off and drank a couple of pints, you might find it hard to distinguish. It's a lesson I can understand, but, again, need to get.
I'd recommend it as an experience. If you want to be cynical, it looks good on the CV, and you can make good networking contacts. (One volunteer was pumping me for information about a job at my company). And relationships spring up between the volunteers -- couples form.
Teamwork and camaraderie, all that sort of stuff. People come back year after year, which says a lot.
It's possible I shall do more nights next year.
