Yesterday morning, I woke up and decided, I'm going to get up and do the same damn thing I've done and enjoyed every Wednesday since time immemorial. And so, my day began.

I wanted to make something for the potluck, so in the morning, I prepared a lentil dish and seasoned it to optimum yumminess while my laundry went through the wash.

I loaded my supplies for the day into the backpack, donned warm coat, gloves, hat, scarf -- the works -- reassembled Serenity (who had been resting in Tobias's trunk), and headed westward.

Yes, the weather was cold, but I'll be damned if I'm going to let that coerce me into living virtually every moment inside a little box. That's the life we Americans are told we must lead; we have a box to sleep in, a box to be entertained in, a box to be transported in, a box to work in, a box to shop in, a box to shit in. We generally only step out of one box to immediately enter the next one. Life is one great big procession of one box after another. Not me, not today. Not if I can help it.

My pace was slow and lazy. Even with the scarf, I could feel the cold biting at an exposed bare spot on my neck. The sidewalks and bike trails were mostly clear of snow, though I ran into a few icey patches on rare occassions. The sky was actually clear, the sun shined, but too far in the distance to warm the frigid air.

Upon arriving at Open Harvest, I cast off my layers of insulation, donned the standard green apron, and consulted with G, the floor manager on duty. She questioned, "So... Are you here as a volunteer today?"

"Yep, that's correct." (And yes, I just might be slightly insane.) Part of the fun of going in on this particular day came in observing the reactions. But somewhere in the back of my head, I sensed that, like an unstable compound, this was going to fall apart before long.

"Ok, cool! We can really use the help today." She suggested that I help the second cashier to stock one of the carts from the shipment. (Technically, this is not a task they normally give to volunteers. But even before I applied to be an employee, I had been doing it sometimes because it was where help was often needed the most.)

So there I am, happily stocking away, when J (the front-end manager) walks up to me, and says in a dead serious tone, "Are you clocked in right now?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because today I'm here in a volunteer capacity."

"You can't do that anymore." He went on to explain that this could land us in big trouble with Nebraska's labor laws. Therefore, volunteering during the same time period when one is an employee is simply not allowed.

"Since T called in sick, we could definitely use some extra help today. We'd love to have you stick around. You'll just have to go clock in before doing anything else."

I agreed to this. So now it was, beyond a doubt, crystal clear. Employees cannot be volunteers. I wonder if the policy handbook will be amended to explicitly state this in a future version. If so, I would feel honored.

It took us a couple hours to get the shipment stocked, and the backstock categorized. And then there was cardboard. Always cardboard.

When L returned, I told her of J's admonition against employee volunteering. She seemed highly amused by the entire episode. She went on to explain that under Nebraska's co-op-unfriendly labor legislation, the entire volunteer program stands on rather murky legal ground anyway.

Technically, the dollar value of discounts given to volunteers should equal or exceed minimum wage. But some volunteers spend very little money at the store (volunteering mostly for the joy and good vibes), while others buy tons of stuff all the time, making their discounts into quite a handsome "wage".

(Me? I calculated long ago that I don't ever eat nearly enough for it to make monetary sense in that regard. Well, maybe it would if I ate lots of sparkly packaged meals and imported gourmet cheeses, but I don't. So I guess I fall into the "joy and good vibes" camp, but still, seeing those discounts whenever I buy bulk nuts and spinach sure is nice.)

I can certainly see where the laws come from -- hell, I've been annoyed at past employers who effectively pushed employees into working "off the clock" (without officially saying so) by assigning duties that could not realistically be finished in the alloted time -- but there seems to be a qualitative difference here. There, it's a case of the company holding a stick over you simply to enrich their profits; here, we have a community project, owned by us, that people want to contribute time and energy into improving.

Or... let's take this to its logical conclusion. Suppose you want to plant a garden in your backyard growing carrots. You spend many days preparing the soil, planting the carrots, watering them, and harvesting them. But at the end of the season, the labor board comes by, assesses the dollar value of the carrots, asks how many hours you spent growing them, and discovers that the value of your carrots is far less than the money you would have made spending the same amount of time at a minimum wage job. Therefore, you violated labor law, and cannot plant carrots anymore.

Sound crazy? You might say that wouldn't happen because you're working for yourself, not somebody else, so labor law does not apply. The government's not going to tell you how much time you can spend planting stuff in your own backyeard. (Well actually, it might, but that's another matter.)

But consider this theoretical case: You and 20 neighbors decide to pool your money and buy a plot of land where all of you can plant carrots, and share the harvest. With more people involved, each person only has to spend a couple hours each week to make it work. Even so, at the end of the season, someone from the department of labor discovers that the dollar value of each person's share of carrots is still less than the minimum wage for the work they put into it. Therefore, the entire operation is deemed illegal, and forcibly disbanded. Now we're getting a hair closer to the present reality.

What's my thesis in this? Do I believe that fair labor laws should be repealed? No, not necessarily. But I have come to conclusion that they amount to treating a broken leg with a bandaid. What we really need to see is a more fundamental shift in the structure of how our resources are controlled. Let's get our day-to-day lives out from under the thumb of Wall Street. Your local convenience store or restaurant around the corner should not be owned or controlled by people a thousand miles away who have never set foot in your town. If we could reach the point where the laborers and owners are one in the same, then I believe the whole issue would become mostly moot.

(And yes, I know, Open Harvest is consumer-owned, rather than labor-owned. A subtle, but important difference; each has benefits as well as drawbacks, but both are far superior to the traditional corporate way of operating.)

Blah. I'm tired of ranting. In truth, we do tread a very thin line between being a commercial enterprise and a public service, between altruism and self-interest, between the candle and the star. Er... yeah, sure, that's it.

Despite all this semi-intellectual blather, I'm not annoyed that I can't volunteer there anymore. I don't know how long I would have kept it up anyway. In fact, I'm glad to have things clarified and out in the open. As I told L and J, this will probably mean I'll be looking for another place to volunteer soon, which might actually be a good thing. (When I said this, L was even helpful enough to give me the phone number of someone to call at Foodnet in case I'm interesting in helping there.)

After that, I went north to the library, where I checked out a different translation of the Bhagavad Gita. (The one I got last week didn't turn out to be as good as it appeared. It only contained fragments of the Gita text, with lots of silly literalist-minded commentary in between.) I read that for a while before heading on to potluck and class, both of which I found educational and enjoyable.

I rode home in the cold, and came to the sad conclusion that I'm unlikely to feel like riding as much in this weather. With all my Open Harvest shifts either beginning or ending in the pitch black cold of winter nights, I don't see myself doing many commutes by bike, at least when I have a working car available.

So I guess my next challenge is to learn how to cope with this new set of circumstances without feeling like I've become "boxed in". Winter is an easy time to get depressed. Yesterday was a test to see if I could still get away with lapsing into my old, comfortable routine; now I know I must adapt in new ways. The fates have spoken.