The Messenger is Mex Med's quarterly newsletter that goes out to over 8500 people. Volunteers come in to stuff, sort, tab, and label each letter so that we can get them out in one day, instead of the process taking days (or even weeks!) with just the 6 of us in the office doing everything. We are SO grateful for these volunteers and would really go crazy without them. I was assigned to the tabber, which seemed simple enough. This machine would pull one newsletter at a time, attach a circular sticky tab to seal it, and then spit it out. I just had to make sure the stack of newsletters stayed at a certain height. All went well for about half an hour, and then the truth came out.
This machine was donated to us when it was on its last legs several years ago. Before they had the machine, people had to staple each newsletter to seal them shut, and that's what made the process take so long. So it's awesome that this (somewhat random) machine was donated. But being that it was about ready to retire several years ago, things have only gotten worse. Every so often (I'm pretty positive it was about every 20 minutes), a tab would get stuck because it wasn't fed correctly. I'd shut down the whole machine, take the unsealed newsletters out, pull the huge honker apart, jam a knife in a tiny little hole that my (apparently not so tiny) fingers wouldn't fit into, hope the tab stuck to the knife, pull it out, put the whole machine back together, run a few test newsletters to make sure everything was lined up correctly, realign the machine since it never was, and then put the stack of newsletters back, all the while maintaining the proper amount of pressure and speed. About halfway through the day, I was readjusting everything and a spring popped off. Now, in addition to everything else I just mentioned, I needed to keep my fingers on the broken piece in a constant state of steady pressure to ensure that the roll of tabs was fed correctly (see picture). If I pushed down too hard or not enough, the roll would get stuck and disaster would ensue. We sent over 9,000 newsletters through this machine - some had to go twice because they didn't get tabbed or it was done incorrectly.
I'm sorry that I took 10 minutes of your time explaining this in great detail. And I don't do it to complain - please trust me on that. I only say this to share the not so glamorous side of my job - it's not all rainbows and butterflies as I play with incredibly awesome kids in beautiful Mexico. It's encouraging for me to see the volunteers (mostly retirees) come faithfully to help us get these newsletters out to people who have supported Mex Med in so many ways over the last 50 years.
Also - it was hilarious and a much needed (although not necessarily desired) lesson in patience. I wish you could have been there!
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