Take your kid to work day 2019. An extraordinary experience, where not only I get to see my fathers work but I learnt how my dads job affects the community and how his job impacts his public and personal identity. My father works for Transit, as a Transit Operator, and its pretty clear to say that his job helps the community, in many ways. As described by CEO of Translink, Kevin Desmond himself, its a job where people, serve people. 

Now what I found surprising, is that there is a variety of people who work at transit.  Its not just transit operators and managers but in fact mechanics, accountants, IT security, Transit police and even trained dogs that help keep the company safe. I had the pleasure of meeting some of the people that I just mentioned, and each one of them had a common response to a question I asked them. The question? Why did you decided to join the Transit Workforce? Every person I asked, always said they wanted to give back to the community. A recruiter, Lucy, said she has always wanted to give back to the community and do the job she loves and Transit was the best fit for her to achieve that. I spoke to a mechanic, who works on repairing the busses and he explained that he’d been in the mechanic career for about 25 years. He has had 16 mechanic jobs throughout his career and he says once he found Transit, something inside him clicked and he knew that this was the right job for him. In his words, “why not? Its the perfect balance of giving back to the community and doing what I love!” 

Public and personal identity is important, because it contributes to who you are as a person. Transits public identity is quite important, due to the fact that its a public service company. During the day, I thought this was represented quite well when the IT and Technology department came in. They talked about how they keep Transit safe on the internet and the web, and how they maintain Transits reputation online.  One IT member, explained there had been a security breach and it almost brought down the company’s online reputation. He and his team got on the case and eventually everything went back to normal, but what we (the public) don’t know is that this happens almost happens everyday! 

On the other side of the scale, the Transit police keep the company and the public safe in real life. I got to meet a crew member from the K-9 unit and he explained to us how using dogs can help keep the community safe. In the eyes of the public, Transit security holds a very high standard for themselves, and the crew member said they need to keep it that way. We got a demonstration from the dogs and we learnt about how and why they train these dogs! 

Transits personal identity also plays a huge part in running their company. All the people who work on the inside, controlling money, and doing tasks they are highly trusted with, always must stay true to themselves and never cheat the system. They can develop a persona of being a good person but thats not the truth. Kevin Desmond said that everyone who works at Transit, must never feel ashamed about themselves that they are working there and each person is playing a large role in running the company. 

I learnt about the importance of how my dads job helps my community and why personal and public identity is essential when working in a workplace like this one. I would like to go back and go more in depth about these topics, and I’m sure I will get that chance. 

~Malaika