Daniel: Right back at it

Daniel is sitting in a library and is reaching his arms and hands out in front of him

After about eight weeks of mandatory leave due to Covid-19, Daniel is back at his job at the City of Bunbury Library.

Getting back to work

When asked how he felt to be back, he said: “it felt like it did when I first went through the door.” What’s astonishing is that Daniel first went through the door to his job over 20 years ago! It’s a fact that not many people in the labour market can say they’ve been at their job for this length of time. Kudos to Daniel, his Forrest Personnel Employment Consultant Donna, and his employer for this long-time three-way partnership.

Getting reoriented

One thing that happened on his first day back – which definitely would have been at odds from all those years ago – was a tour around the library with a staff member to talk about all the new procedures that are in place to manage in this strange new world: hand-washing practices, books in quarantine, which washroom to use, and vacating an aisle of books if there are two people already there.

Following his re-orientation, he told us it was great to “get stuck in, and not have to wait around.”

Not a holiday lover

We were curious to find out what Daniel got up to during his near eight weeks of leave. When we gently probed this question of Covid-19 self-isolation, it was clear that Daniel is not fond of holidays, or in this case, time off. “I’m a worker,” he told us.

What was missed?

What did he miss about his job at the library, we wondered? Apart from doing his job of putting books back in their rightful place, he missed his trips to and from work including taking the bus and strolling across the park from the bus stop near the “seniors’ place.”

Right back at it

More than twenty years is a long time on a job, and many storms would have been weathered. Getting right back at it after the turbulence of Covid-19 is a testament to Daniel’s work ethic, his tenacity and to the fact that he feels right at home in his beloved library.


Photo: Rob Cox, oxy images | Originally published on the ABC Open website as part of Portraits: In the Club

We’re here to help | Tel: 1800 224 548
https://www.fp.org.au/our-stories/daniel-right-back-at-it/
www.fp.org.au
crawl=CC-MAIN-2022-40
47862
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:VKFOQPTIHGF27RRSUQVB26Z6CTS3BYPT
<urn:uuid:63f11cc2-a948-44e7-b50e-487f6c58ae17>
2022-10-07T13:26:27Z
182.160.167.213
text/html
sha1:6JXV6BUTKGJKTAE3G64UTP2DEBUMQHYE
<urn:uuid:1c05540c-5ac8-40f9-8a01-e1cc85f21075>
https://www.fp.org.au/our-stories/daniel-right-back-at-it/
response
<urn:uuid:19a32ac0-4ac4-4508-956a-d1b4e8a70074>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2022-40
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for September/October 2022
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-67-67-88
software: Apache Nutch 1.19 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 1.4-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: https://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/