It was very much taken, and appreciated, as the joke it was intended to be.
 I actually had to be part of a situation like this.
The venue had failed to think through the full ramifications of opening times and staff hours, but it was eventually worked out, although had an understandable knock on effect on new staff who had been planning their travel arrangements around the orignally advertised job times. It's a bit rubbish too, having to tell someone who has just finished their visit that they can't buy anything, because you have already closed the till up.  If a historic or heritage venue, heck, any venue, says they have smoking policies, please do obey them. Odds are it isn't purely draconian, but is, for example, to protect vulnerable items, or prevent sensitive alarm equipment going off and you all having to go and stand outside while the food goes cold and the fizzy goes flat. Also, it doesn't matter who you are, what you paid for, or who you know, if you've been told, you’ve been told. Security don't muck about.
 First Post in quite a few months.
They have been very strange months. This was actually drawn a while ago having just visited a major exhibition where I assume that the label heights were intended to be accessible for all? Or something? But ended up so low down almost everyone took a hunched position of some kind, and then crabbed their way along the packed lines. Even if you could peep at an object between people, good luck trying to see any written interpretation about it...  Huge respect to the various arts and crafts events organisers making the most of making things without much to start off with.
 When I read about this, I instantly had a flashback to a similar an instance with a teacher and a full class of 30 kids, which I may now be tempted to render in cartoon....
 This is absolutely, utterly, not a dig at the many thousands of volunteers without whom so many venues and services wouldn't be able to remain open and functioning.
This is a conglomerate of the tales I have been told where volunteer staffing has increased, and the existing paid staff have suffered with mismanaged hand overs, miscommunication and outright false promises. Paid staff with years of expertise, experience, stores of knowledge, thousands of pounds of education, seeing their positions packaged into chunks and those chunks handed over to volunteers (some of whom also posses all those qualities, yet can't get paid work) until they are left staffing tills, cleaning, and providing security detail. Paid staff reassuringly told that "we won't be replacing you, you will still have a job!" and slowly finding that their role now only features the tasks that managers can't attract volunteers to. Yes, many venues need the voluntary help, but it has to be properly, honestly, decently managed. |
Webcomic and occasional blog about the heritage sector.
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December 2020
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