Yes we are volunteers, but we indicate our
availability for a meeting in the
hope that we are required and selected. We should never view the volunteering form as a
demand for free admittance to an event that we fancy.
I'd like to see the "over-subscribed" meetings turn the numbers to great advantage via training using mentors. This could be offered to all grades looking to understand more about the duties in grades above their current level.
Most folk will step up to IO or PC to help out at a "short" meeting and do their best based on how they've seen others do the job. To have a spare IO or PC who is willing to spend the day standing with a few of us and talk in depth about how and why all of the minutiae of running a post happen as they do would be excellent.
In particular, nowadays we so rarely get the chance to coach / be coached on the finer points of flagging in the live environment. To be able to man the flag point and still have a "flagging god / goddess" standing back to pass on their expertise could improve standards significantly. So often you flag alone and even if manned as a pair, your partner has their own workload and is looking the other way to you & your role.
Finally, at these over-manned meetings, is it only Incident that gets swamped, or do the Specialist duties get equally increased numbers? I've helped out on Pits & Assembly occasionally, but never thought that these meetings are ideal to learn more by shadowing one of the regular crew ......
If you feel hard done by about the marshal selection process, then see how abrupt and demanding the Olympic volunteer site shows their attitude to be!
http://www.london2012.com/get-involv...nt-journey.php
They have publicised that they will have to whittle down the 240,000 applicants to a mere 70,000 places - worse than a one in three chance of getting asked!