Not the Worst Job I've Ever Had... But Close (part 1)

There is something about being in a foreign country that makes you do things you wouldn't even dream of doing at home. Going home with an 11 year old Taiwanese eunuch? Maybe. Waking up next to a foul smelling German sporting a Fila tee shirt? Perhaps. For me though- it involved something much less glamorous and infinitely more physically demanding. It was migrant farm work. Seven days of pure misery; culminating in a check that in any other circumstances would not have been worth the paper it was printed on. A migrant worker is essentially just somebody working outside of their home country, typically performing seasonal work for less than standard pay. This is like analogizing that a street walker is just somebody who enjoys intercourse, may or may not have a meth problem, and may have been fondled by Uncle Gus as a child. Migrant workers are extremely underpaid, over-worked and exploited. This post is not a rant on migrant farm work, however. I'm no social activist. All I knew of migrant farm workers before this experience was of those that sneak over from Mexico and pick oranges wearing straw hats and wielding machetes in the Everglades.

My sister and I had been backpacking in Australia for 5 months. We had virtually run out of money and had consigned ourselves to eating couscous and stealing rations of butter and spaghetti sauce from the hostel refrigerator. The plan was to rent a car with two of our friends and drive across the Outback. The only glitch in the plan was that the car rental was for two months and had to be paid in full up front. Out of some deal-gone-wrong with my sister, the burden was placed on me to find us some sort of temporary employment for just over a week. The hostel bulletin board contained signs all over the place for receptionist jobs, data entry, etc., but the problem was that these were positions that you had to train for and were on a semi-permanent basis. What we needed was quick cash. Short of selling my body (4 months of binge drinking had not been favorable for my figure- my clientele would be sub-par to say the least) I didn't have any options.

One day as I ran my eyes over the board I saw a sign which simply read, "Workers Needed", and underneath was a 10 digit phone number making reference to a man named John.

"Hmmmmm" I posited. Sketchy? Without a doubt. The sign looked shabby and was devoid of any sort of job description whatsoever. Since I have an intense fear of getting bludgeoned and killed, I was skeptical to say the least. We were in an unfamiliar country and I did not know standard backpacker protocol for situations like these. I approached the hostel reception desk, sign in hand.

"Do you know anything about this job"? I asked.
"Nothing", she replied
"Well, did you at least see who put it up? I mean, is there any sort of procedure for who can put up job postings in your hostel"?
"No, not really. I mean, anyone can put up a sign really if they pay the $10".
Great, I thought. For the mere price of ten dollars I was going to be personally responsible for shipping us off to dismember body parts, or worse, to have our own body parts dismembered. I wondered if our rotting corpses would be found in decent enough shape to be expiditedto the US in a coffin.

I debated whether to call or not for all of two hours before I decided that we had no other options, short of flying back to Florida 4 months early. The phone call left me even more unsettled. All that I got from this "John" character was that he seemed to be middle-aged, no-nonsense, and needed workers almost as badly as we needed a job. The only informative given to me was a remote address, a bus number, and a day on which we were to meet him at the bus station. He had hung up before I realized that I had completely forgotten to ask him what we would even be doing.

After looking up the town on the map, we realized how remote it really was. The Outback is a vast and desolate place and you can drive for days without even seeing another human. Needless to say, we packed our stuff and said goodbye to our friends. We had mobile phones, but no way of knowing if they even would work where we were going. I had set up a rudimentary emergency plan for if we did not arrive back the next week- our friends were to alert Australian authorities and give them the phone number from the board.

We boarded the bus with trepidation and hoped for the best.

Part 2 Coming Soon..