Whether I’m talking about working holidays with friends back in Taiwan or meeting fellow working holidaymakers in Australia, the questions everyone loves to ask—without fail, and usually among the very first—are:“What job are you doing now?”and“What jobs have you done?”Apparently, the most important part of a working holiday in Australia is work. What you’ve experienced, where you’ve travelled, and how many international friends you’ve made don’t matter—the job you do is what matters most?! Hmm… I have some serious doubts about that… But since I get asked these questions so often, I thought I’d put together a record of my jobs so everyone can see what I’ve done, along with a brief introduction to each one. I’ll add links to the full details later when I get around to writing about them chronologically~
First job: Bonaccord Corn Factory – Packing
Location: Sale, Victoria
Pay: $13, cash in hand, through a contractor
Period worked: 2010/2/8–2010/3/19, six weeks in total
How I found it: Referred by a friend (dear big bro Jimmy XD)
This was my first job in Australia. Luckily, my former ASUS colleague Jimmy had arrived in Australia three months before me and paved the way. As soon as I arrived, he booked me in at the factory where he was working, so I got a job without ever having to start looking!
It was much like any ordinary factory job. I stood on a production line, cutting corn freshly harvested from the farm into sections, sorting it, and packing it. It was easy, mindless work, but after a while it got boring and made me incredibly sleepy XD. The only fun part was chatting with everyone, though we couldn’t get too carried away. The harder part was standing for more than eight hours a day. My feet would be aching when I got home, and my arms would get sore from tossing corn around. But compared with the jobs I did later, it was a piece of cake. The air quality wasn’t great either, and it was bad for my skin. Still, the company treated people well. The only downside was that, because we worked through a contractor, the pay wasn’t at the standard rate—although the contractor himself was very nice. Even though the hourly rate was below standard, the shifts were long and there was sometimes overtime on holidays, soit was a job where you could save money without getting too exhausted~
Second job: GOGO Juice Bar – Shop Assistant
Location: Carindale Shopping Centre, Brisbane
Pay: $10, cash in hand; Taiwanese and Chinese owners
Period worked: 2010/5/26–2010/8/5, twelve weeks in total, but only 27 actual working days
How I found it: Walking around handing out résumés
After leaving the corn factory, I came to Brisbane and started trying to find a job on my own—the true rite of passage for anyone on a working holiday. After spending two or three weeks pounding the pavement, I finally received my first phone call. It was from this drink shop in a Shopping Centre in ZONE3. I came all the way to Australia to sell drinks; maybe I should have worked at 50嵐 first~ Haha.
The shop sold all kinds of things: freshly squeezed juices with ingredients chosen by the customer, Boost-style smoothies, classic Taiwanese bubble milk tea and slushies, plus wraps. There was quite a lot to learn, but the job was genuinely fun. I got to make tasty drinks and wraps myself, even if everything followed a recipe, and I could speak English with customers every day. Almost everyone who visited this shopping centre was Australian, so I had no choice but to use English. It also fulfilled my goal of working as a shop assistant. I originally thought a customer-service job like this would really help my English, but actuallyyou only improve at the beginning, when you have lots of new vocabulary to learn. Once you’re familiar with the job, you realise you keep using the same limited set of words, so there isn’t much room for improvement. The pay was also genuinely awful—the “minimum wage” for jobs run by Chinese employers = =;; Other students were already on the roster, so I was only a rostered PART-TIME worker. I often earned just enough in a week to cover the rent, and sometimes even had to make up the difference myself. It was a job where I couldn’t save anything and could only just cover my living expenses. The owners were very laid-back, though, and we could eat and drink whatever we wanted from the shop while working. Naturally, I didn’t hold back: every shift, I gulped down enough drinks to get my money’s worth, then spent the whole time running to the toilet XD. Even after quitting, I still constantly craved drinks! Haha~ All in all,it was a fun job, but with so few hours, I couldn’t save much money。
Third job: OAKS Apartment Hotel&Resort – Housekeeping
Location: CBD, Brisbane
Pay: By room, with different rates for different room types and public holidays; an OZ company requiring an ABN
Period worked: 2010/7/9–current, four months so far; planning to stay until the end of December
How I found it: Also by walking around handing out résumés
My top goal when job hunting in Brisbane was to work in Housekeeping, so during my first week here, I went crazy handing out résumés to every hotel and backpackers’ hostel in and around the city centre. I didn’t hear anything back. Then, three weeks later, I unexpectedly received a call from a Housekeeper Office. It operates a bit like an agency and handles housekeeping for many Oaks Apartments in the city, as well as the famous Hilton. You have to apply for and work under your own ABN, though, which means paying for your own uniform and giving them a cut for using their cleaning equipment. A slightly dodgy OZ company.
The job was hotel cleaning—basically, restoring rooms that guests had used and messed up to a state where they could welcome new guestsXD. But because this was more like a Resort hotel, every room had a kitchen and living room. It wasn’t as simple as some Hotels that only have a bed and bathroom. If guests had used the kitchen, it was exhausting to clean. On top of that, we also had to do Daily Service and Weekly Service, meaning that while guests were still staying there, we would come in every day or week to do some cleaning, replace rubbish bags and towels, make the beds, and so on. I was also selected to work as a Supervisor inspecting rooms cleaned by other people, and that paid a bit better because it was calculated by the hour.
I was assigned toOaks Felix Apartment on Felix Street in the city centre—a 4.5-star Hotel!This job was honestly quite exhausting. I’ve never actually worked on a farm, but I’ve always thought of it as farm work in the city: physical labour that also demands attention to detail. Every one of my colleagues had aches and pains in different parts of their body, and of course I did too ><. Constant contact with cleaning products makes your hands rough, some people’s facial skin gets worse, and you inhale a lot of chemicals. It really isn’t a job you should do for too long. But thanks to this job, I think I’ll be extremely professional at cleaning my own home in the future, and I can even make my bed look like a hotel bed every day XD. Daily income depends on how many rooms need cleaning and how many workers are assigned to split them between. We usually work at least five days a week and earn at least a little over $500 before tax, sothe income isn’t bad, but the job is genuinely tiring and hard on your body。
