I just gave my notice to Connie, the president of the shelter where I have volunteered for the past four years. It was a decision a long time in the making, with recent events finally pushing me over the edge. My primary shift was Thursday evening adoptions, where I would go to the shelter directly after work at 3 p.m. and stay until 7 p.m. My duties mostly included showing potential adopters our animals, and completing the necessary checks and paperwork, as well as a bit of cleaning and feeding. It was fun and I loved it. I was great at it and found wonderful homes for a ton of dogs and cats. Lately, I had begun to dread going in for my shift. It wasn't the animals or the cleaning, it was the people. I hated dealing with stupid people! Sometimes I'd get some very pleasant people in there but usually it was jerks who shouldn't even have animals. It got worse and worse and I couldn't take it anymore. I was extremely burned out, and finally in January, I told Connie I needed to be done with adoptions. She happily put me on a Wednesday night dog shift, where I just walk, clean, feed, and play with dogs, and don't have to deal with the public. I was so happy because that was going to be my perfect shift on my perfect night. Wrong! They didn't tell me that they weren't taking Erika (a paid employee) off that night. Supposedly I was to "help her" and also do my paperwork and miscellaneous crap. Working with Erika sucked. She had everything done by the time I got there, made me feel like I was totally in the way and completely useless. So, for the past few Wednesdays, I had just been going in for about 20 mintues to take pictures of cats for the website and do my paperwork. I feel like it's a waste of time and I feel totally useless now that they have all these paid employees. It confuses me... here I am offering to do a shift for FREE as a volunteer and they'd rather PAY someone to do it? It's not like they have a lot of money. Apparently I'm one of about four other volunteers who feel the same way. We have dedicated YEARS to that shelter only to be run out by paid employees (which is a relatively new thing for this shelter). We were all very reliable and good, so why all the employees all of a sudden? I will miss working with the animals and people but it's time for me to step back and take a break for a while. I thought about donating money to make up for not volunteering, but the thought of my donation ending up as somebody's paycheck makes me really angry. I think I will just buy items on their wish list instead. I'm kind of sad right now about it but it was my decision to quit and with the whole house buying process going on, I think it was the right time to do it.