Sea of peripheral volunteers

I have a friend who never seems to see the people around him. He lets the door swing shut just as an elderly man is about to walk through and he never sees the mom carrying a baby needing to get by as he blocks the aisle in the store. It’s as though he has no peripheral vision. It got me to thinking about managers of volunteers and how we develop our peripheral vision to the point of hyper awareness.

You know what I mean. You’re the kind of person who:

counts the number of people behind you in the buffet line at a friend’s party and then you mentally divide up the pasta portions in the pan to make sure that you don’t take more than your share.

looks around at a concert, sizing up the height of the crowd and then squeezes into a…