[Pandajuice]

From what I've heard and experienced, volunteer work is just as demanding and difficult as normal work is. Not only that, but they can be even more serious about the work and thus less understanding about people taking time off or being flaky.

Also, I think most people and the government feel that if you're going to collect disability, you're pretty much declaring to the nation that, for whatever reason, it's impossible for you to work. I don't know how the government would react knowing you're doing 4 hours of volunteer work a day (which at a zoo is much more labor intensive than a regular office job) while collecting disability, but I for one would scratch my head and ask, "If you can do this work, why can't you do normal work?" There's a million temp agencies that will put you into a temporary job whenever you needed for as long as you wanted that's really no more difficult or strenuous than posting on the i-mockery forums all day.

I think it is pretty cool that you don't want to just sit around collecting bits of other peoples' salaries that they work for and want to volunteer to make up for it; but the way I see it, if you can do volunteer work, you can do normal work; so you might as well do that. There's more pride in earning your own money anyway right?