Today, I added a comments thingie so people can now add comments to each post I make, including this one. It's provided free by the good folks at Haloscan.com. The diary will be back soon - in full, within the next couple of days. The daily updates will be happening again - as well as a lenthy, movie length explanation regarding the temporary disappearance of the diary, and what I have been up to for the past couple of weeks. For now, the links to my diary archives will not work, so don't bother clicking them...but they will be back up very soon. Feel free to speculate in the comments section on what has been going on in my little world in the meantime!
Here is the much anticipated update! The archives of the diary are back, and I have also changed the format of my diary page - let me know what you think in the comments section at the end of this post!
At 9pm after I finished work on the 21st of July, my bosses stated that they needed to talk to me...so they did. They told me that they have been reading my diary, and consequently, they were rather pissed. They asked me to delete it. I said no. I was then informed that they were going to take legal action. I said...whatever! Next, I was told that I was to pack up all my stuff and meet them at 745am the next day to get driven and dumped in the nearest town! Soooooo...yeah. I was deported! Oh yeah!
It wasn't a huge surprise that they were reading my diary, as I had suspected that they were already doing so, because of some off hand comments that were made by them in the previous week or so. That was when I added into one of my posts that I liked the managers - lie - to see if I would get any reaction. No reaction was forthcoming at that point though. A few people have asked how the managers could be reading the diary in the first place. Well...it is online for all to see, so essentially anyone can read it. Furthermore, they had the address of my website because I was going to make a website for their business....ha...not that that is going to happen now! Oh well...blaaaah!
The bloke manager asked me what they had ever done to me?
"Did you not read my diary?", I said. Given, I haven't put absolutely every single thing that has pissed me off in my diary, but it should have given him a pretty good idea! I told him that I didn't have a problem with him, and that my problem was with his girlfriend (the other manager), and the cook. This manager is one of those extremely weak people one meets from time to time, who puts up with his partners shit, seemingly with no complaints. Hearing the way she frequently talks down to him, and how he just takes it is pathetic. They do however deserve each other.
They think that the problem with them not being able to keep staff is due to the inadequate staff that have been employed there, not with them. Really? So that is why multiple people usually last a week at their place of employment and usually leave, giving no notice? Sure, its the employees problem. Pfft. Oh, and the locals also are of course all wrong about the managers - they are both great people who offer exceptional, friendly service...pfft. *insert sarcasm here*.
Anyhoos...back to the alleged legal action. I know a bit about defamation, which I guess they were getting at in regards to their threats to sue me. As far as I understand from what I learnt in regards to defamation, the only way you can defame someone is if they have a good reputation, and you say something to damage it. These people have a really bad rep in town, so I could hardly damage it. Plenty of people in town could back me up with that. Furthermore, it is hardly defamation if what I am writing about is true. There were not any names mentioned either.
Despite not mentioning names in my posts, I decided that the information in the diary mentioning the name of the town, and nearby towns I was in should be removed, to further add to the anonomity of the posts documenting my experiences. My intention has never been to upset anyone by writing this diary, but I refuse point blank to be censored to the point of removing posts in their entirity, particularly when there are not really any legitimate grounds to do so.
Because of the above, and also because I wanted to ensure that I got my last pay, I removed the entire diary temporarily, with no reason provided regarding its removal. I really was worried that they were not going to pay me, as they have previously not paid people who have done runners and so forth. I wrote about that previously in my diary - all this was discussed on the car trip with the manager on the first day! So...despite the fact I did not do a runner, I still did not want to risk not getting paid if I could help it.
The pricks charged me $150 for my last phone bill, which was an absolute crock of bullshit. There is NO way I made $150 worth of calls. $100, perhaps, but definately NOT $150! As previously mentioned, the phone system which records all calls made went down just prior to the manager leaving me here alone to manage the place with the cook for four days. I was told that there was no way of getting records for any calls made during that time. Considering I was working 15 hour days, there was not a chance I made many phone calls (other than a few to the internet, which are local calls) during that time frame. Given that I just wanted to get out of there though, I paid it though. I figured that it would have cost me $30 for a bus trip to the nearest town anyway, so they have only ripped me off a little.
The night they told me to pack my stuff, they were kind enough to disconnect the phone from my room as well, leaving me no chance to get anything organised for the next day, as far as accomodation and so forth in the nearest town. Pricks. The next day I was walking back from my room and the cook comes up to me and says, "I hope you are going back to Rockhampton, cause I will have people waiting for you there. I am going to sue your ass." I told him to fuck off. Yes, I am a nice person. Really.
The funniest thing about all this is that after weeks and weeks of bitching about the cook, they all essentially ganged up on me in regards to the diary thing. It is so interesting to see how two faced people can be. The cook constantly bitches about the managers. Also...both managers have told me on multiple occasions - essentially every day - that they hate the cook and that they are going to get rid of him. In fact, around three days prior, the female manager had called me into the office (again - this is what she always did when she wanted to bitch about the cook), and said that the owner was already trying to get someone to take his job.
The owner had found a couple to take over his job, but they had a little dog that they were not sure what to do with, so the owner was looking into what could be done. Cook it on the barbie perhaps? I don't know. I am truly curious if they ended up firing the cook as promised though. That would have been an interesting sight to see.
Anyhoos...I ended up staying in a nice hotel in the nearest town for a few days. It wasn't really worth the money that I paid, but I just needed a bit of time to regroup after my experiences of the last month or so. I offered to pay for the accomodation when I first arrived, but they said not to worry because I could pay when I left. No problems. They then took my credit card to pre-authorise it or something. I wasn't sure, but went ah...whatever.
Later, when I tried to check out, and pay by credit card, it was declined - even though I had the money in the card to pay for it! Turns out when they pre-authorise payments, they make it so that the money can't be spent in the meantime. They told me that the pre-authorisations sometimes take up to 3 days to be removed! What a stupid system! I could have just paid for the accomodation straight up. Luckily, I had money in my savings account to pay, but yeah it was embarrassing, stressful and unecessary process to go through.
The service there was pretty crap also. I went to book in for an extra couple of nights at one point. The receptionist asked if I minded if she served the one person waiting in line as they were just checking out. I said, "sure, no problems". People then continually kept walking in for approximately 5 minutes, who she served before me - even though I was first. After being ignored for long enough, I then went up to her and said that I was not spending hundreds of dollars at this hotel to be left waiting while other people were served before me. She apologied and said that she got a little carried away doing the "easy" check out ones. Whatever.
On another occasion, I had gone for a long walk around town. I was shocked when I got back and saw the room of my door open and a room attendant with her back to my door around 10 metres away. Considering I locked the room before I left, and had all my stuff - including my laptop in my room, I was rather pissed. I suggested to the room attendant that if she was cleaning a guests room which had stuff in it, it really was a good idea if she was to lock the door - just as it was left - if she was going to walk away somewhere. She agreed.
It wasn't all bad though! They have free movies running on the tvs in each room from early in the morning to late at night. I managed to watch a heap of movies, and also got room service for the first time in my life ever, which was great - but expensive! I ended up staying for 4 days before I went back to Rockhampton.
The day after I got back to Rockhampton, I had the second part of my interview for the job I have talked about in previous posts. It involved me going into the job agency, and doing some tests on their computer. First was a test on the computer about call centres, which I breezed through, then there was a typing test. After I finished the tests, I was told that I did exceptionally well in both. I was particularly happy with my typing test where I got 79 words a minute, with one mistake. Ah, I am good.
A few days later, I got a phone call from the agency, who told me that I was through to the next stage, which was an interview with the actual employer. I was told that they would call me back about a week later and give me the date and time of the interview. Around a week later, my phone rang, and it was the agency. They told me that the employer did not choose to interview me. This was a bit of a shock, but there was not a lot I could do about it.
I went home and went searching on the jobs.gov.au website, which I have been doing pretty much every day since I finished my last job. I have still been looking at fruit picking and so forth, and saw an ad for tomato/egg plant pickers in Proserpine. Accomodation was $120 a week, and transport to and from work was included in that price. It said, "Immediate start". Given that I called on the day that the ad was placed, I figured that I would be in with a pretty good chance of getting work.
I called up the number, which was a backpackers hostel in Proserpine. They said that although they can not guarantee work, that if I arrived the next day (Thursday 11th, August), that I should be able to get work on Friday. When I arrived on Thursday, I paid my $120, and then went exploring around town, and then back to the backpackers. I spoke to a girl who was doing tomato picking, who had been fired after 3 days - apparently she was too slow. She said that it was a really shit job. She then told me about how the wages are worked out.
Each bin that gets filled is worth $85. This, I knew as it was in the ad that I responded to. When I talked to the person on the phone, they said that my hours would be from around 6am in the morning, through to around 3pm in the afternoon. They said that most people could fill one or two bins a day. That, I figured wasn't too bad, and it would pay my rent at the backpackers, as well as give me extra money on top of that. The girl told me that what one earns is dependant on what your group picks, not what you pick as an individual. She told me that her group had 15 people in it and she made $70 or $80 and that it was around a 12 hour day. She also mentioned that people have been told that there is work, when in fact there is not.
As it turned out, I ended up speaking to quite a few people who were able to confirm that they too were told that there was work, but there was none. I figured that it was a pretty good scam for the owners of the backpackers to run, to get people into their hostel and get their $120 worth of accomodation. I was understandably disappointed when I did not get asked to work on Friday, or Saturday. Saturday morning, the owner was knocking on peoples doors asking them to work. He had not yet knocked on my door, but I heard him say, "Hmm. Nobody wants to work". When I immediately opened the door and said that I would work, he said that he had just got the people he needed. Later in the day, I found out that the extra people he sent travelled out to the farm, and then were told that they were not needed. That is a two hour round trip, and they made no money!
I finally got to work on Sunday. I got up and jumped on the freezing cold bus at 530am, got to the farm at around 630am, then waited around with the group freezing away. A few people showed me the injuries on their hands. They said it was from not wearing gloves the day before. I did ask when I first called about the job if there was any equipment I needed, but they neglected to mention that gloves would be a good idea. Arrrr.
I finally got to start work, and what it involves is walking down really really long rows of tomato plants, brushing the leaves away looking for tomatoes that are ready to be picked. The majority of the tomatoes were green, which were ones that did not need to be picked. The ones that needed picking were those with some "colour" in them - any colour except for green though. I had to walk down the really muddy aisles between the rows of tomatoes, with a big bucket, which was where any tomatoes that I picked went. When someone has a full bucket, they yell out, "Bucket" (although, as the day progressed, it sounded more like, "Fuck it!").
Each bucket of tomatoes got passed from row to row, until each bucket ended up outside of the rows of tomatoes where a truck was parked. The truck had the empty bins in it that needed to be filled. Then, once all the tomatoes were emptied into that, the empty buckets needed to be passed back along the rows to each of the workers. Everytime someone yelled, "Bucket", I cringed as we were all in different areas of the rows. Ideallly, if we were in a straight line, there would be no walking backwards or forwards to the row of people passing the buckets...but yes...we were all over the place. Walking with a bucket, even just a few metres was rather irritating and a little painful. Lifting the heavy buckets between the rows expended even more energy.
I did bring a bottle of water, but it was not enough. I asked the bloke who was driving the truck if he knew where I could go to get my water bottle filled up. He pointed inside all my fellow employees bags and said, "Just take some water out of their bags". I was like..."Um...I will be right thanks." I then went and asked if anyone could spare some water. There wasn't a lot to spare, but it was better than nothing.
About 12 hours after I started my day, I was back at the backpackers, with the knowledge that I had made around $80 for the days work. Also, my hands were totally black due to not wearing any gloves. I smelt of tomatoes, had mud all over my shoes and clothes, and could not scrub all the dirt out of my hands and nails no matter how hard I tried. I now have some small scratches on my hands, filled with dirt that I have no idea how to get rid of. At the advice of a chemist, I put dettol on them...but yeah...it didn't help a lot!
I spent the day thinking that maybe tonight was the night that I should leave and go back to Rockhampton. Although I did not really want to work again for wages like that (around $6 an hour it works out to be!), I would definitely do picking again, if the money was right. Some farms do pay for the work you do, rather than that of the team, and I think that that is really the way to go, as you can make quite a lot of money.
I now know why farms can pay so little though for this sort of work. Backpackers from overseas are only allowed to work here in a normal job for three months. The only way that they can get their visas extended so that they can stay for a year is by doing fruit picking! Sooo...given the amount of backpackers who want to stay for more than three months, and the fact that this is the only way they can earn money, it is understandable that companies would know this, and consequently pay pitiful wages. They know that once one backpacker is gone - even if they only work for a day, soon enough there will be another one the next day, ready to work and be exploited again!
I decided that it was not worth staying on for the rest of the time I had paid for, so I went to ask if I could get refunded for the nights that I had not stayed if I left early. They said that yes, I could get a refund - but - the nights I had already stayed would be charged as single nights, which are $25 each. I ended up getting $20 back, and then leaving on the 840pm bus to Rockhampton. I arrived home at 230am on Monday, 15th August, happy about my latest adventure and wondering what my next adventure would be.
Other stuff I have been doing lately...cooking! I am finally inspired to try to get my shit together in the kitchen. When I first got back from Western Austrlalia, I bought a grill/sandwich press. I have been making yummy burgers, potato thingies, and just generally cooking much fabulous stuff on it. It is great and I wish I had got one sooner.
I spent yesterday working out all the paperwork for my tax, and am off to the tax agent this afternoon at 4pm to hear the good or bad news in regards to how much money I will or will not get back. I made bugger all last financial year, so hopefully I will get heaps back...who really knows though! *crosses fingers*
I was stunned to watch the Big Brother finale and see the Logan twins win. Errrk. Ick. Arrr. Admittedly, I have been harbouring a bit of a crush on the kind, clever, considerate, compassionate Tim, almost since day one, and was hoping that he would win. Given that I never vote for these sorts of competitions though, I shouldn't really complain about the result!