Utica Children's Museum

The Utica Children's Museum is an interesting place to volunteer because there are always different jobs to be done, things are always changing. It's nice to see different families come to explore the Museum. One day you could be assisting a field trip, another day you could be painting a wall. When you give back to the community here, in a lot a ways you get back too, with experiences with children that visit that make coming back again worthwhile.

We worked the Maker's Fair without a problem. However, it was not the same with Alice in Nanoland. First, my name was wrong in the book and they wrote down that we working 4-7, even though we had said 6-9. They decided to put us on the table up front. I have 10 years sales experience and now work as a design engineer, but the woman in charge (who was on "break") saw fit to greet everyone and acted like we weren't there. After 20 minutes, she told a new volunteer that we had been at the table for a while and she should take over. We were sent to the kitchen and then told the 2nd floor was most important because sack races were to be run. In the 45 minutes we were up there, exactly 2 kids ran 1 race. It was so disgustingly hot that no kids wanted to be up there. We were soaked with sweat and thirsty, so we went downstairs. The others were standing around a desk chit-chatting. Obviously they have too many volunteers, so we left. Disappointing how they treat their volunteers. Never again.