My job is to open gates. Every day for eight hours I sit on a chair on a construction site in Melbourne, opening the gates at the site’s entrance whenever a truck or van needs to get in or out. That’s it. That’s all I do.
The gates are made of steel and look more like fences, the kind you see at music festivals. They have wheels at the bottom. When a truck or van pulls up, I push the gates open. Once the vehicle has passed through, I close them again. From 8:00 am to 16:00 pm, that’s my life.
I know it sounds boring. If someone told me that was all they did at work – open a gate – I’d think the same. It’s hardly the most stimulating job. But I like it. Instead of being sat in an office, I’m outside in the sun. And vehicles don’t show up very often, so I spend most of my day reading books, something I love to do. As a legal requirement and safety precaution, I have to wear high-vis clothing and steel-cap boots. However, the only danger I face is losing the page I’m on in my book, or running out of battery on my phone from constantly refreshing Twitter. Some days I have to charge my phone three times.
I understand how some people would go crazy from boredom, but I genuinely don’t. I’m never not reading my phone or a book, and sometimes I write stories, like right now. Nearly two months into this job, I haven’t experienced serious boredom yet. I know I will eventually, but for now I’m OK with being paid nearly $30 an hour – a standard general labourer’s wage – to read and sit down.
The ridiculous nature of my job isn’t lost on my colleagues, if you could even call them that. (I doubt skilled carpenters, plumbers and electricians see me as their equal, and fair enough.) Workers on site walk past me and laugh, or screw up their faces in a way that says, “How the fuck is that guy still doing this job?”
I just laugh and smile back. Sometimes they joke and say things like, “I reckon you have the cushiest number in Melbourne mate,” or “All you need is a fucking beer, aye?”
The construction site we’re on is a retirement village. Most of the houses are finished and now occupied. It’s beside a golf course and a river, away from the noise of the city. Unless someone on site is using a drill or an angle grinder, all I hear is chirping birds and the occasional crack of a well struck golf ball in the distance.
The elderly people who live here seem to like me. They often come down for a chat. I enjoy it because a lot of them have dogs I can pet. Sometimes they also bring chocolate. A lot of them have Irish relatives or ancestors, so they like talking to me about “home.”
I keep applying for better jobs, and by better I mean jobs that aren’t such a piss take, because I can’t do this forever. I want a writing job, or something in publishing, but jobs like that are difficult to come by. Also, the “working holiday visa” I’m on is designed to make it more difficult to find good work. For example, you can’t work for the same company for longer than six months unless the company “sponsors” you, which means they have to pay a few thousand dollars for you to get a different visa.
A sponsored visa means you also get to stay in this country for another four years. Those of us on the working holiday visa only get one year. If we want to extend our visa for another year, the Australian government makes us work on a farm somewhere picking fruit for nearly five months. Fuck that.
If someone gets sponsored it’s considered a big thing. A lot of my friends here are sponsored, but it’s because they have a highly skilled profession or because they worked hard at convincing their employers to help them out. I have a BA in English and a Masters degree in Creative Writing. They’re hardly the sort of qualifications that get employers foaming at the mouth. I’m optimistic something will come my way though.
Before landing the gatekeeping gig, I worked odd shifts as a general labourer on other construction sites. I was carrying heavy steel, clearing debris, or pushing wheelbarrows piled high with bricks. The work was hard and I would come home tired.
So for now, I’m happy being interrupted from my book to push a gate open.
Aaron500 