It’s August right now, I can clearly remember last year as a difficult point in my life. My grandma had died two months earlier and I felt completely absorbed in grief and stress. Nearly everyday my entire body, but mostly my stomach and jaw felt tense and tangled.
The funny thing about emotions is whether it’s stress, grief, happiness, joy or excitement nothing seems to last forever. But so are the other feelings like anger, sadness and grief, they can also be temporary.
When I arrived in Australia in February, I couldn’t believe what I had done. It was really that easy, I left all my problems and had enough money and ideas to start a new life. Over the first few months in the country my mindset started to change, I felt refreshed, relaxed and revitalized. I remembered why I had chosen to travel and felt confident in my decision, even through the hard days.
Completing my regional work for a second-year visa was something that had been on my mind since the beginning, and it was also proving to be the most difficult task on this new adventure in Australia. I was stuck in a situation with a contractor, then felt exploited from every angle. Finally, it felt as though my dreams had come true.
After leaving one exploitive situation tree planting, the same day I found work with a small family-owned farm to complete the rest of my regional work days. The catch was it didn’t start for six weeks, but I felt that this was a compromise I could make because of my previous situations. And, I had looked for work for three months previously, I didn’t think it would get easier all of a sudden.
Everything about this job was perfect, I would pick avocados and live in an old farm house with a housemate so I could fix up my van on the side. Everything seemed perfect.
The bosses were honest, clear and helpful. They even offered to lend me power tools to work on my van. Most importantly the pay was good. This was a hourly paid job and the work was to be hard but doable.
When work finally began it was still everything I dreamed of. The team climbed trees like kids to pick avocados high up and worked together, quickly and efficiently. My supervisor was chatty but helpful and even showed me how to drive the tractor.
Then on day four, the energy in the group shifted as my supervisor showed up in a bad mood and made everyone feel it. It seemed no matter what the team did it wasn’t good enough. We were either too fast, too slow or just wrong no matter what we did. And, it no longer seemed important if we picked all the avocados on the trees, as long as he decided the tree was clear of fruit we had to move on. Even when there was obviously still fruit there.
My stomach and jaw began to clench up, I felt tense as the energy in the group became hostile. The team seemed confused, not sure of the reason for the mood change but we tried to make the best of the day. At our break my boss had popped by to check on our team and I mentioned to issues with our supervisor in private. My boss brushed it off saying the supervisor is a redhead and by tomorrow everything would be fine.
I felt really confused that night, I kept replaying scenarios in my head from the day but nothing made sense. My supervisor had been so emotional, aggressive and irrational about everything.
One instance was just after our morning break, my supervisor brought up that three of the team members had bad experiences with other farmers, all at different times. He believed none of it could have been true and accused us of slander. We delicately explained the situations were real and not every farmer has the best intentions. He fired back by saying if we didn’t like this job we were welcome to quit ASAP so he could find new people. He said this even though we never criticized our current job and explained these experiences were in the past.
I kept replaying this, but tried to believe it was just one day and things would be better tomorrow. But, from previous experiences, I also started to feel like no regional work situation would end well and I would never complete these days.
Unsurprisingly, the next day wasn’t better. When I talked to the other backpackers I worked with they were all terrified. No one had money to move on so we all chose to keep quiet and hope things were get better.
During lunch that day my stomach was in such a knot I decided to sit alone, then my partner had joined me. I didn’t want to be around more aggression than during work already. However my supervisor approached my partner alone after work and said if we sat away from the group again during lunch we would be sacked immediately and he would tell everyone in town that we were bad workers, so we couldn’t find another job.
I laughed when my partner told me all of this, especially that my supervisor couldn’t even say it to my face. But after having my job threatened like that I decided to talk to my boss again a bit more seriously this time about what he had said. When I did she seemed surprised by many things, but gave the same advice as before, just to play along and do what he said, but not to say anything that would upset him. That’s exactly what I did.
I will admit though I was getting a bit depressive about the situation and some moments I would act overly excited or enthusiastic when talking to my supervisor. But, I never stopped working hard or giving the job my all.
The next week a few new people started and I hoped they would help rebound the previous problems built up by the supervisor. Ideally to dissolve the other problems. With the new week and new coworkers things felt better but there was still a dark cloud looming, my supervisor kept us on edge. Somehow though my partner and I were the targets of every negative issue, everyone else could offer help or talk to my supervisor but if either of us did he would either ignore or bully us.
Three days into this no longer promising work week, and we finished our first farm plot, as we took our morning break and moved things over to our next farm the supervisor pulled my partner and I aside and fired us. He said it was due to not enough fruit and too many workers.
I wasn’t surprised by any of it at that point, heck my car could’ve exploded and I would’ve just sat there and laughed.
I was devastated though, this meant that for the over six months I had been in Australia I was only working for a month and a half altogether, with only a month and a week counting towards my second year visa. I also didn’t have the budget to not work for so long, I had accounted for a few months without work, not over half of my trip.
Mostly though I was frustrated, again, with the Australian government and the farmers who take advantage of backpackers.
When I finally talked to my boss, the one who hired me, said we were fired because our supervisor said we had bad attitudes and had been complaining the whole time. This couldn’t be further from the truth, but I knew nothing I said at that point would change what had already happened. The boss ended it with saying she didn’t want to lose the supervisor as an employee. I knew there was no arguing. My partner brought up the supervisor had been sexually harassing, bullying and mistreating workers. And I brought up that we did everything we were asked, and the supervisor was the one with the attitude problem, not us.
Even though I had so much excitement and trust for this job, it ended up just being another situation to prove that ‘backpackers’ will always be seconds in the workplace, never first. To be clear I never expected my boss to fire the supervisor, I just hoped for a conversation of some type as a reminder it wasn’t okay to bully employees—among other issues.
Being laid off was really tough, this was the job that could have guaranteed me the regional work days for a second-year visa and added to my savings for more adventures. Mainly though I was pretty broken to felt betrayed by so many people and have my trust broken on a personal and professional level.
This also all took me back to how I felt the year previous, feeling choked by life not knowing where to go next. Thankfully this job wasn’t my whole life. I don’t care about these people that take advantage of backpackers, I know like so many other situations in my life that I’ll get over this and become even better than before.
