Just the job for those scorcher summer days
FOR many bosses, a staff member having a sickie on a scorching hot day is a nightmare.
For Barb Muxlow, it can be heaven.
“It’s not always the worst news because it means another opportunity for me to get in the water,” laughed Gold Coast Aquatic Centre’s learnto-swim co-ordinator.
“My job can involve a lot of admin so I’ve got no complaints having to fill in for an instructor on hot days … I’ve been doing this for 36 years and it’s always been a nice feeling during summer to think ‘Great, I’m off to work today’.”
In a week where construction workers have been passing out on building sites, Barb and her team of 17 swim instructors have been living the dream.
Clock on. Get paid to be in the water. Clock off.
“This is definitely the hottest summer I’ve experienced,” said Barb, who migrated to the Gold Coast three years ago to oversee the learn-to-swim program at Southport’s new aquatic centre.
“Coming here from Forster (on the NSW North Coast), we’d have the odd bit of hot weather but nothing like it is up here. This is my third summer on the Coast and this is hot.”
Not that Barb and her mates are complaining.
“The hot weather actually brings more people in,” she said as her swim instructors shared the water with smiling mums, dads, bubs and toddlers.
“When the weather’s like this, parents want to make sure their kids are learning to swim so it flows on to our enrolments.”
There’s always a flip side though, even for a woman with what may be the coolest job to have in hot weather.
“I actually had a biopsy this week,” Barb said of spending much of her career in a nonsun smart world.
“I was teaching eight hours a day in the sun when I had my own business and have had to have skin cancers removed.”
She then glanced skyward at the ceiling of the indoor pool.
“Fortunately it’s much better nowadays. We’re in a controlled environment and the centre actually supplies sunscreen to staff.”