The bliss of job satisfaction
Holding positions as cleaners has been life-changing for Rita White and Rick Delaney
TRURO, N.S. – Rick Delaney takes pride in his work and enjoys showing up at the Rath-eastlink Community Centre to take on his duties.
Delaney has cleaned floors and vacuumed stairways at the RECC for three years. He’s conscientious about leaving everything he touches “spotless, clean and scrubbed.”
He landed his cleaning job with help from Colchester Community Workshops in Truro, where he has been a client for 30 years.
“I like it here, they’re very friendly and kind to me,” said Delaney of his RECC colleagues. “It makes me feel happy.”
Before joining the RECC, CCW trained Delaney as a cleaner, assigning him a job coach to help ease him into the workplace. Although he has graduated from the CCW’S work program, he is still a member of the organization and can seek support if he needs to.
At the RECC, Delaney uses a vacuum cleaner nicknamed the “ghostbuster,” as cleaners strap it on their back and use an attached metal tube to suck up waste.
For Delaney, the biggest challenge was his job interview. But he aced it.
“It was a frightening interview, I feared I was going to get nervous talking to them,” said Delaney.
However, he has won the admiration of his boss, Don Hall, the Recc’shousekeeping coordinator.
Of the 10 cleaning staff on his roster, seven are past or present clients of the CCW.
“They have a lot to offer,” said Hall. “I find them to be one of my greatest assets here, actually. There’s nothing they can’t do or try to learn.”
The key to success for Hall’s employees is building up confidence. This means asking questions whenever they are unsure about anything.
For Delaney’s colleague Rita White, confidence also means navigating tricky situations not covered by her job coach. Just two months into her job, White encountered crowds of hockey players at the World Junior A Challenge in December of that year.
“There were massive groups, everything was chaotic and I had to work around them and figure out how to clean without bothering the teams,” said White. “It’s fun, you don’t know what you’re coming into, you’ve just gotta work around it.”
While challenging, White often finds her cleaning job rewarding, especially when meeting people from across the world, as happened during the 2018 Down Syndrome World Swimming championships. There, she encountered a woman from the Japanese team and its travelling support group.
“She was really respectful, giving out gifts to the cleaners and thanking us in Japanese,” said White. “They taught us how to say thank you and goodbye in Japanese, took pictures and bowed to us.”
White started as a parttime employee, but she has now graduated from the CCW and works full time at the RECC.
She enjoys an easy going bond with Delaney and other co-workers. They joke about “putting up with each other,” but they often smile and laugh together.
“I was her best friend – don’t forget,” Delaney said about White.
Their efforts do not go unnoticed.
At the end of a busy work week, Hall rewards White and his other staff with a Friday evening meal at Mcdonald’s. It has become something of a ritual for the RECC’S cleaning crew.
“For what they give me, it’s a little thing,” said Hall.