Adventures in Tabling: your experiences and mine

[Epoch]

Hey all,
So I just got done tabling for Dean in Howard County, MD at the library. Signed up 7 new supporters, got 6 new meetup'ers, handed out a dozen bumperstickers and pins, and talked to two dozen people in an hour. Not bad I guess. Most people were watching the Ravens game though. I registered two new voters. Both were 18 year old, college attending, african-american females. One registered repub (don't know why). The other registered republican as well, and then her friend told her to register democrat. On their way out of the library, I asked her why she was going to register Repub. I mentioned how stastically, her demographic is ideally democrat. She said that she hates Bush and would never vote for him, but finds the democrats too liberal and "has more morals as a muslim." So I figured the other girl was like that as well. It was interesting nonetheless. So one democrat, and one repub.
As far as the tabling, it was great except the other volunteers focused on selling buttons or bumperstickers or handing out flyers. I like to do things that are more fundamental..not just giving them a pin, but signing them up. Then not just signing them up, but registering them to vote and telling them how they can help the campaign themselves and telling them about meetup. My tactic is to talk to every person that crosses my path and be aggressive about it (not to them, but to talking to people. I am always polite and friendly). That was my first problem with one of the volunteers, they were focused on the less "i don't know the word, maybe active-oriented things." It seems silly to me to grab their attention and then just hand them a flyer and send them on their way without encouraging them to help (one lady who I got to talk to by actively seeking her out wrote a check for $100 to Dean right on the spot and put it in the mail right there! The other elderly, african-american women who helped out was delightful and such a sweetheart. I told her about DU and she said she has been here before.
The next thing was this lady who showed up to help. She was loud, obnoxious, had nothing intelligent to say, and was horrendus. SHe told us in the first 2 min how her father had a stroke and then told several people who came to the table to learn about Dean. It was ridiculous. Then she spent 30 min on the phone yelling and speaking very loud, driving people away from the table and forcing us to raise our voices. It was very uncomfortable. When another lady came to pick up the table she told the loud lady to talk somewhere else (she was polite about it). This lady started yelling, and screaming, and bickering about her father and how he had a stroke for 15 minutes in front of 2 dozen people!! SInce it was over, I left in embarrassment, but the lady was still yelling and at then end she yelled "I'm just gonna go and support Kerry then."


We defintly don't need silly, obnoxious, loud, and worthless volunteers who do more harm than good. it was disgusting. Other than that, it was still a great day for us and Dean.

Anyone else have similar horror stories or weirdos while tabling?
Yaron


on edit: the girl who went dem after initially going repub did not know about being an independant or unaffiliated.