Männid kastanis: Enough of Onslow

So the time has come to leave Onslow. All the mismanaging and psychopathic behaviour of the managers finally drove us away (the job itself was not actually bad... if only they would have different managers). As it has become a habit of mine, I had to send a letter to the owners of the shop explaining the situation as well (I have already written it but I will send it when we leave. I still have three days of working there to go. And now the managers are actually sucking up to me because they need someone to do the last three days since one girl is ill. It is a shame, because I still really like Onslow. The first time that we went to sports club (a bar with free pool, darts and other sporty games) we did not know anyone. The last time we walked in, 6-7 people raised their hands to welcome us... so we have made some new friends. So why did we leave? The last drop was when...

When we came to work here, we were promised 35-50 hours a week. I got about 33 during the first weeks, then 38, so I was quite OK. Erik got about 34 during the first weeks as well. Then the French couple was fired (they gave their notice two weeks ahead, they came to work on Sunday and they were told that it was their last day of work because a new guy was starting on Monday; a week later Sharon came and gave us all a story about how it was because of the French guy’s knee injury because it is not very useful for them I we start going without any notice; not even the supervisor knew anything about that excuse or the reasons for the firing; and the knee injury had healed by the time they were fired) and all of the Sundays (we get 2x salary then) were given to the new local guy although he is really not very consistent or good at his job. So all the hours were redistributed so that Erik got even less hours. So he started taking an interest in how many hours anyone had got and was trying to understand the logic of distributing the hours. Then we made the mistake of mentioning Sam and Sharon that Erik’s birthday is coming up and we tried to get the hours rearranged so that we would have some time to cook some Estonian birthday food (potato salad and so on). Their response was that for a week they made it a point to mention every single day that we will be fired if we do anything to the house during our birthday party (there were less people in total at that „party“ than we have had living in this house together and we tried to explain it to them several times that it is not that kind of party... it is a few people eating and talking) and we both got full days on the day of the birthday and the day before that. Generally traditional Estonian birthdays are about people eating a lot and drinking a lot of vodka. If you don’t have time to prepare the food then you can only concentrate on the second part.

After the „party“ they came for an inspection and they were the friendliest people that I have ever seen, taking interest in our life (generally that does not happen... they do not really want to have anything to do with you) and saying that the house looks very nice and clean. And the next day back at work we were called in the office and what we got was something like that (with a hissing and very threatening tone): „You have been harassing people about their hours; you are breaching your contract; you should be fired right now and asked to leave; you are not allowed to discuss your hours with anyone; we thought that we were doing you a favour by giving you more hours; you stole the new people’s roster from the office; we have it all on the video; we could call the police“. Yes, we have talked to other workers about our hours but I do not remember signing anything that had me promise not to do it (and anyway, they kept the only copy of whatever I signed. Both the contract and about the breaks that we are allowed to have – which I think they have been breaching themselves because we do not get four breaks when we work more than ten hours). Yes, thank you for giving us more hours on that one week but clearly you gave them more to disrupt with our birthday plans. And the point was not that we want more hours or less hours... we wanted the hours to be more fair and distributed between us in a logical way. Yes, both of us peeked at the roster that was in the office which was probably not the right thing to do. But we were just curious about the new names and wanted to know who they were replacing. If we had any normal communication in the store we would not have had to do that anyway. (that is actually taken out of my letter to the owner... I just added a few details and took some out. I did not write to him about drinking vodka :D)

But before I leave this chapter behind me, I need to describe some of the people that come in (because I actually meet every single person in the town) I know the names of most of them but I will not mention them. And I would really love to add some pictures, but they (especially the aboriginal people) would probably not appreciate it much.

One of the most colorful people is an old (aboriginal) lady who often comes in and is looking for her „keycard“ (bank card) because she is sure that she left it in the store. She forgets things so she has systems to help her remember them. All her bags have „ME“ written on them in red. She always wears a big hat that has the pin number of her keycard written inside it. She wants to take our previous supervisor (whose partner is a local cop) somewhere in the bush with guns and then they are going to... „...you know what we will do with them guns“. She is quite fun to talk to except sometimes when she pours all of her coins on the counter to buy something but there are several people behind her.

Then there is one (aboriginal) couple who are always bare feet and wear the dirtiest clothes and have the dirtiest faces and sometimes have the dirtiest little babies that I have seen. The man (eyes usually red and half-shut) has blonde highlights in his hair and is quite big. They sometimes come in with purchase orders and sometimes I am counting their coins so that they can get some diapers or cigs. And then other times they come in with hundreds of dollars and buy alcohol and sweets and sodas.

Then there is one (aboriginal) lady who has real trouble getting out of the car even, she is so big. At first she was also rude with me but after some time she is quite nice. The problem with her is that I can smell her presence when she is already in front of the shop. When she walks through an aisle in the shop, you can smell it a couple of minutes after she has left. And sometimes she comes in and buys a lot of things as well and stays near the checkouts. Then I always try to escape the register for a couple of seconds at the time to get some oxygen.

Then there is a white old man who comes in and buys at least one bottle of the same white wine each day. So he may come in in the morning to buy the wine and some vegetables and then again in the afternoon for just a bottle of wine and then again in the evening for another bottle of wine and a bread.

Then there are the Wheatstone people (they are building a gas plant outside the town and there are about 7000 people living and working there) who always have several separate orders of food. So other people in Wheatstone have given them money or a card and asked for some snacks and stuff (they get their food straight from their suppliers and it is cooked for them there so they only get additional stuff from the town) and the people who come to the store then have sometimes 6-10 different orders that they want to pay for separately and packed separately.

And so on...

Anyways we are leaving on Monday and will first probably go to Karratha (a actual bigger town). They have actual normal grocery stores with much lower prices and some choice plus shops for clothes and electronics and so on. After 7 weeks of not seeing normal shops, I will probably want to buy all the food that they have and everything else as well. But we will still find a job for a month or so somewhere between here and Broome because after Broome we want to take the Gibb River Road (660km of 4WD road with amazing natural sights) but we’ll see what happens. First we will rest from the work for a few days and then we will see what happens.