[TheThinkTank] bike thieves in the shop?

[jirs0004 at umn.edu]

Bike theft lead the Grease Pit to close the shop to kids for two weeks the 
end of last summer. When 15 bikes were stolen by kids who we were helping, 
but could not identify by name or face later we knew that something needed 
to change. The week long session of meetings lead to a shop manual to help 
us understand how to focus and think of ways to earn the respect of these 
kids.

Despite all of our best efforts to learn names, focus our attention for 
Earn a bike kids onto a special day, and to keep shop security tight, we 
have had little success. Kids are stealing out of our donations jar and 
taking bikes from under our noses.

Because our space is shared with a theatre, security needs to be tight, but 
this would leave us with too few collective members in a space that is 
already over-run with people needing help.

While all of this is going on we are also experiencing a mass of volunteers 
who are bike jock-ish and act as if the shop is theirs. In order to help 
maximize the shop accessibility and friendliness, we need to figure out a 
solution and proto.

Question 1: How can we give kids the attention they need while not limiting 
the number of commuters that we are helping? (as they are already 
discouraged by the lack of assistance and excessive quantity of kids in the 
shop)

Question 2: How can we effectively utilize our volunteers without 
constantly monitoring them and having to call them out or hear about them 
later?

I would also like to know what success orgs have had with limiting the 
number of kids in the shop.