Take your seat: The next step in Annie’s employment journey

Annie’s employment journey began in Year 12 when she established a part-time microenterprise to learn customer service skills. After graduating, she worked as an administrative assistant at an accounting firm and then did some filing at Murray’s Coaches. Annie developed a range of valuable skills and was soon ready for a job with more hours and opportunities.

Annie’s Job Mentor used the principles of Customised Employment and collaborated with Murray’s Coaches to develop a new role for Annie. She now works five days a week in an important role that allows her skill set, interests, and personality to shine.

Video transcript

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Take your seat: The next step in Annie’s employment journey

Kathryn Lee, Annie’s mother: 

Annie is 24 years old. She works for Murray’s Coaches Australia. She’s been there for about two years now in her current role, but then she worked in the admin area for about a year before that.

Gabby Beaumont, Annie’s job mentor: 

Annie’s great. Annie is such a character. If you’ve met her, then you’ll know. She’s very sassy, very funny, so full of life. Yeah, I’ve loved working with Annie.

Annie Lee: 

My name’s Annie. I work at Murrays Coaches. My favorite things at work is seeing my friends. And I love learning with them, and they make me happy.

Kathryn Lee:

Initially, she started in Year 12 with doing a microenterprise, Pa’s Produce, and that helped her learn some really valuable skills. She learned how to interact with customers, how to prepare for a shift, set up, tidy up, do money transactions. It was a really, really great experience for her.

It’s a seasonal business, so it couldn’t really evolve into a full-time job as it was. And we tried to explore how we could extend it, but in the end, Annie and us decided that it wasn’t really quite the right fit for an ongoing full-time job.

We continued to explore jobs for her. So, we talked to everyone we knew. We wouldn’t be pushy, but we would always look for an opening. And one such discussion led to an offer of a part-time role in an accounting firm. They started her by looking at tasks that were just done by general office admin. They looked at the tasks such as fetching the mail, opening the mail, setting up and tidying up after meetings. And they scoped these out into a list of duties that Annie would do each of her shifts.

Annie really loved that role for probably about a year. And then what she found was she wanted to be stretched. She wanted a few more hours, and she wanted a few more interesting tasks. We would talk to the employer about it, but we weren’t able to develop that job to be anything more than that.

And at that same time, Damian, my husband, his staff were complaining about having an excessive amount of filing to do. So, the team in the admin area were accustomed to seeing Annie pop in from time to time and seeing her dad. So, they asked Damian if Annie would be available to come in and help them catch up.

She fitted in well with them. She would be able to do the task without oversight. They really appreciated having her there, and that worked out really well. During that period, one of the observations he made was he was quite surprised by how good she was.

I think with the success of Annie working in Murrays’ admin area, Damian thought it was worth seeing if there were tasks and jobs at the Jolimont Centre to make a role for Annie in that area. So, he had a discussion with the manager of that area, and they talked about that as a possibility, and to see if they could send someone in there to see what sort of tasks and duties could be made into a role for Annie.

Tiana Tenari, Senior Reservations Consultant at Murray’s Coaches 

So, Gabby did organise to come in. That was basically her getting to know the ins and outs of what Annie’s role would be.

Gabby Beaumont:

When I first came in, and they were showing me around, I thought that the loading the buses role would be something that Annie would really enjoy; getting to have those little interactions with the public, with the people, and seeing people she knows out in the wild would be something that she would really get a lot out of.

Tiana Tenari:

Her day-to-day roles consist of allocate the seats for passengers travelling on our services. So, she does that in between dispatching the services going to Sydney. So that means greeting the passengers, checking them in with QR codes, and then giving them their seat numbers as they board.

Gabby Beaumont:

When looking at the seat-allocating role, it looked really complex to start with and a bit daunting, maybe. So, I got them to really break it down one step at a time and lay out all of the decision-making that goes into where people are seated, all of the steps, and I just wrote down every step.

Annie Lee:

I like loading a bus. It’s really good. When I load, I have to tell the guests where they are sitting, and I tell them, “You can’t take glass bottles or hot food.”

Tiana Tenari:

In terms of interacting with passengers, she has become more confident in not only greeting the passengers, but also being aware of the rules for travelling on our service. So, we can’t have hot food on our services, and she can sniff it from a mile away.

Gabby Beaumont:

Annie catches the bus into the city every day and usually starts on the computers, logs in, starts doing some seat allocating, and then she usually loads two buses a shift, sometimes three.

Tiana Tenari: 

She enjoyed the part of getting outside to dispatch and chat with passengers and other staff members, but I did actually want to kind of switch it up a bit, because I understand how boring it could get just doing the same thing every day.

So, I had asked her if she was interested in looking after our lost property. So, that would entail any lost property that we would receive from drivers. Annie didn’t require any notes or anything with that, mainly because I feel she was confident enough with the system. She now looks after that as well.

So, we enjoy having her come through, even if it’s only for a few hours a day. She brings a lot of smiles to faces of not only the drivers, but the staff behind the counter as well. So, it’s very enjoyable having her around.

Kathryn Lee:

Right from the go-get, we always thought that Annie would have a full life. We always believed that she would be able to do that. We always saw employment as part of that. We saw inclusive education as a stepping stone to that. We saw that she would be able to live independently, and that’s something she’s just starting on the journey to do.

We wanted her to have all the good things in life that she could have based on what was important to her. We wanted her to be a valued member of our community. We wanted her to feel good about herself and what she contributed.

And with that mindset, we have intentionally chosen to do things that will take us along that journey. Every step has given her more confidence and helped her learn more skills. It’s helped shape her vision of where she’s going and what she wants. And so, it’s our role as parents to help her along that journey, to do what we can to set her up for success. Some things might sound a little bit over-ambitious, but she sets her course, and we do what we can to support her.