Do you want to know how I did that? Hi guys! Today I will be talking about a really exiting event; Take Your Kid To Work Day!!! (Or Job Shadowing for short). This was basically where instead of going to school, I followed my dad around to find out more about his job and the place that he works at. Then if that wasn’t exiting enough, I also was there to make a video to help show what I learned.

What does my father do?

So what is it that my dad actually does? My dad is a operation supervisor for a transit bus company. His job is to talk to the public, receive and respond to complaints and, in some cases, compliments. He then decides whether or not the complaint should be investigated. Sometimes a complaint is about a personal opinion and isn’t something that needs to be pursued. However, there are also complaints that are about situations that should have and could have been dealt with. In this case, depending on the situation, he can take a variety of actions ranging from just warning the driver, to getting the police involved, to firing someone. My dad has worked at this company for over 10 years. Until recently he was a driver and then the person in charge of defending the drivers from getting fired, after that he was promoted to the job that he has now.

Something that really stayed with me is something that my dad mentioned; “a workplace filled with laughter, is a good workplace”. Basically when everyone gets along with everyone else, the workplace becomes a lot better of an environment to work in. While I was there, I went with my dad and 2 other people to do frontline support. This is when supervisors and managers go out to meet with the drivers to make sure that they are doing ok. While we were there, we were also giving out awards. The awards that we gave out were for 5 years in the company, and 10 years in the company. However, there are also many other types of awards such as; perfect attendance, years at the company, safety award, safest driver, and the peak award. While the other awards are self explanatory, the peak awards are for drivers who go above and beyond to do something. I think that these awards are a good idea because they help to keep moral up and it makes the job more interesting. On top of that, it helps to show the community the kind of support that happens in public and within the company.

Speaking about community support, on our way to the company I saw a lot of messages posted on the bus. The messages were displayed where the bus number usually is and it tells us whether or not the bus is still in service. These messages said things like “go team go”, amber alerts and “lest we forget” for Remembrance Day. I thought that this was an interesting idea because it’s somethings small but it shows support and respect and that’s something that I really liked. I also found out that the bus company will lend some busses out during special events. For example, they will be lending busses for Victoria Day. This also really shows the public the kinds of things that the bus company supports an I think that it helps give them a strong image.

Now, if I’m going to talk about the bus company I gotta mention the strike. For those of you who don’t know, the strike is currently for bus drivers asking for hi higher wages, and more breaks. So basically, better working conditions. Up until recently their method of protest was to not wear their uniforms and to not work overtime. However that might not be the case for long. Soon they will have a formal negotiation and if things go badly, there may be an all out refusal to work. This means a lot of things for a lot of people. For the public, this means that they will have to find a different mode of transportation. It will inconveniences a lot of people and will probably lead to a lot more traffic. For people like my dad, this means overtime. A lot of overtime. The busses need to be turned on every few hours for maintenance and if there isn’t people to do that, there will have to be someone who steps in. That would be people like my dad. For people like me, that means that I will be spending less time with my dad. For the drivers, they will get paid even thought they aren’t working, but it will be a much lower amount than what they would get if they actually were working. This means that might not have enough for living expenses. So lots of unhappy people. When something like this happens, it really makes you think about how much you actually rely on it being there. Most people don’t actually think about it but it’s nice to stop for a moment and realize how much you use something.

Finally, I took all of the things that I learned above, and condensed it as much as possible. Then I made it into my video using iMovie and Keynote. For the animations; the introduction and the ending, I used Keynote. Then I took all of the clips and put it into iMovie, editing it a whole bunch. In the end I came up with my final product that I am proud of! I hope that you guys learned something new and enjoyed reading!