Dickinson College Humanities Program in Norwich

Today was my second day volunteering at the Greenhouse Trust in Norwich.  Since all UK businesses must take an inventory of all their stock at the beginning of every business year (which starts April 1 nationwide), I was tasked with calculating the total value of all the products in the Greenhouse’s shop.  This was made significantly easier by the fact that I was given a list of the recommended selling price of every product and the amount on the shelves and in the store.  I just had to do some simple addition and multiplication to get the total values of the stock, which I gave to Tigger, who was obviously very appreciative.  This took up about the first hour of my four hour shift.  The rest was spent in my regular responsibilities of running the till and restocking shelves.  Today was a very slow day customer-wise (about three total customers came in the whole time I was there), so I was able to spend a lot of time perusing the shop’s collection of environmental books.  I picked up several interesting ones, including The People’s Manifesto by Mark Thomas, who went around the UK asking people what they wanted the government to do prior to the 2010 election.  Some of the suggestions were a bit far out, like forbidding people in support of a National ID from owning curtains, but it was still an interesting read.  The other, Seven Years to Save the Planet by Bill McGuire, was more pertinent to my academic interests.  McGuire, a world-famous volcanologist, has determined that the citizens of the world have seven years (as of 2009) to change their resource use habits before permanent damage is done.  He focuses on basic questions concerning global climate change, obviously directing his writing to someone who isn’t an expert, which makes it very accessible.  But enough of the book report.  My next day spent at the Greenhouse will be in two weeks, which hopefully will be a bit more exciting than today.

I completely forgot to take pictures this time, but I will include a picture of the shop and hopefully Tigger in my next post.

Date: 2/4/11

Time: 10-2

Hours: 4 Total: 8

Supervisor: Tigger