Slow Time Tasks

During any Sorting shift you may be caught with a full group of volunteers and absolutely no material to sort. What to do with so many willing hands and so few things to do? Slow Time Tasks!

• Offer breaks to volunteers who have not taken their allotted breaks, depending on length of their shift.
• Monitor Tetris
• Check boxes for properly wrapped cords.
• Cleaning. Sweep around the incoming shelf, under the Sorting Table, and below the Sorting Shelves.
• Break down boxes. Save sturdy boxes & small packing boxes for Bulk Sales.
• Sort Anti-static bags, packaging material, paper bags, and ziplocks.
• Empty Recycling bin and Cardboard container, as well as rolling cart in Receiving hallway, along with recycling bins (cords, metal, styrofoam), etc. Take paper and cardboard through the garage door to the bins located in the parking lot. Cardboard goes into the big rolling bin, paper in to the blue curbside bins, and, if you're replacing the blue bin from the hallway, return with an empty bin.
• Sort and move Sorting boxes to their designated areas - e.g. Hardware Testing box to Hardware Testing/BETA, steel box to recycling.
• Clean and organize Basic Testing area where keyboards and mice are tested. Have a volunteer switch to Basic Testing if incoming keyboards and mice are overflowing, or Backstock is needed. This can be broken into 2 jobs, where one volunteer tests and another cleans. Or it can be combined into one task for a volunteer to test AND clean.
• Sort and break down styrofoam, put it in a garbage bag and throw it on the Styrofoam shelf. Sytrofoam should be broken down into sizes about the size of a fist or slightly bigger.
• Sort batteries, bag all rechargeable batteries to get them ready for shipping. Please supervise volunteers closely when sorting and bagging batteries. Spot check to make sure no volunteer misunderstood the directions, or forgot parts of the directions. There may be more batteries to bag in recycling. Please return rechargeable batteries, both packaged, and the batteries you weren't able to get to, back to the warehouse check in area. If they are left in Sorting they may get contaminated with other batteries, and packaged boxes will get unpackaged. http://wiki.freegeek.org/index.php/Sorted_Batteries
• Ask the Recycling Warehouse if there are batteries to test (When tested, working ones can go to the store)
• Ask the Recycling Warehouse if there are drive rails to deconstruct (separate metal from plastic parts)
• Deconstruct floppy disks and sort into their components (Magnetic/non-magnetic metal,trash and floppy plastic) The flimsy circular media is trash. The hard plastic outer shell is floppy plastic. If there aren't any in Sorting, ask in the Recycling Warehouse (Please leave a backstock for Recycling!) The cloth from inside the disks also needs to be separated, and can be included with the trash.
• Christmas lights aka Light strands - First verify whether the light strand works, if they do work, send to the store. Light strands with LEDs do not need to be disassembled. Have volunteers and staff wear gloves and safety glasses to prevent injury, specifically from broken bulbs. Remove any replaceable bulb covers, sometimes these come in various decorative shapes. Remove each bulb from the socket (little bit of plastic at the bottom of the bulb is ok to leave on), cut off the strands any bulbs that cannot be removed. Place bulbs in a plastic bag and put the bag in the Advanced Recycling box in Sorting, or bring to a Recycling staff member in the warehouse.
• Clean Mice & Keyboards. Go through the Store and Grants Backstock in the warehouse, pull any dirty mice or keyboards out and have the volunteers thoroughly clean them. Use Simple Green and rags as well as brushes.
• Sort Filmy Plastic. Clear stretchy plastic, No.2 or No.4, no colored plastic. Sorted Filmy must be put into a CLEAR plastic bag (under the sorting reuse shelves). Any plastic that is not clear & stretchy should be sorted out accordingly.
• De-construct CD Jewel Cases. Separate Clear plastic, colored plastic, and black plastic into separate boxes. Make sure to recycle any paper and CDs.

If none of these tasks lasts long enough and it doesn't look like there will be any donations, consider diverting volunteers to another area. (ex: Recycling Warehouse) -- But don't forget to ask the area coordinator, front desk, AND the volunteer!