Yes, I trained Lisa. She sat in class with the rest of the group and offered comments, answered questions just like anyone else. I didn’t quite get the sense that she wanted to help like most other trainees, but that certainly didn’t disqualify her. I’m too afraid to make a judgement up front like that because I have been horribly wrong in the past.

Anyway, Lisa left a voice mail message the other day. She couldn’t come in for her shift. What she did not realize is she failed to hang up and when her cell phone rang, she answered it. The voice message recorded the whole conversation. I suppose I should have deleted it before I heard it, but it happened so fast…

It went (in short) something like this…

“Yeah, oh hi! No, no, it’s ok, I’m not doing anything. I know, I know. Uh huh, uh huh, tonight? I think I can. No, he doesn’t suspect a thing. No, no, I can tell. No, Roger’s f#@$ clueless. I can’t wait to #@#$ ….”

Well, you get the rest. Roger is her husband by the way. Curse those message machines that accept long messages. Curse me for not hanging up. (what’s that say about me, shudder?). But curse having knowledge that I don’t want to have in my head.

Now, Lisa, who was before this knowledge, a potentially good volunteer, is a smarmy cheat in my eyes. She has a right to her privacy. Thankfully, I don’t know most of what goes on in the private lives of the volunteers. We volunteer managers get involved in enough of it.

There’s not much I can do about what I heard, except try to put it aside and concentrate on whether Lisa does a good volunteer job, just like any other volunteer.

But I know that the next time I see her, I will hear some of those descriptions in my head. I can’t promise I won’t be stand offish or give her a judgmental look. I do know, that if I pick up another voice mail from her, I’ll just delete it and call her back. Shudder or I’ll have to get therapy.

-Meridian