Working on big issues - Page 2
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 24: Participation Society
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Alan Attwood
IT WAS PLANNED AS A ONE-OFF EXCURSION ON A WEEKEND MORNING, nothing more. I took my youngest son to the Collingwood children's farm, just a few kilometres from Melbourne's business centre. For many city kids it's their only chance to see sheep and cows and goats. Parents like it too: for a couple of hours they can pretend they're in the country. Our outing went okay, though Gus had seen quite enough animals after an hour or two. Before we left, though, and without much thought, I'd scribbled down some details under a notice headed Volunteers Wanted. Then I followed it up and went along for an introductory session. They made it clear they wanted a degree of commitment, not just blow-ins who wouldn't show up again after a session or two. I nominated Friday afternoons as my preferred time: seemed like a good way to end a working week after too much time sitting at a desk.
So I became a part-time farmer. I helped weed the veggie garden; I shovelled shit, working my way around paddocks with a wheelbarrow; I bottle-fed newborn lambs; I learned to milk a cow (badly). After I'd been there for a while I was accepted, trusted with keys and a bit more responsibility. I enjoyed myself, coming home filthy but pleasantly tired.
The fact that I was earning nothing for my labour didn't bother me. On the contrary, it was immensely liberating not to be putting a monetary value on my time. Occasionally, my different worlds overlapped. I was doing some freelance pieces for The Age; one afternoon, a section editor rang to discuss an assignment while I was in a paddock. He said his piece, paused, then asked: ‘Can I hear sheep?' Yep, I replied. I couldn't tell if he'd put down the phone envying my outdoor life or just shake his head sadly and tell my former colleagues that, clearly, I'd lost it.
Then, one afternoon, my duties changed dramatically. I was checking in with the woman who normally gave me my weekly task when another staff member came by, obviously looking for someone. Seeing me there, waiting, she asked if I had any problem working with disabled people. Not at all, I replied, though I wasn't sure what I was letting myself in for. I had been vaguely aware of a group that came on Friday afternoons: people in wheelchairs, a couple of Down syndrome blokes, others with callipers or walking frames and one big, noisy fellow who charged around a lot. They were all there for supervised outings, but our paths had rarely crossed – until then, when my Fridays became Afternoons With Paul.
Paul was, of course, the big, noisy fellow who charged around a lot. My job was to be his minder: to work with him closely, ensure he didn't get into trouble (given half a chance he'd slip away, find a kitchen and scoff whole jars of sugar or instant coffee) and, most importantly, tire him out a bit. A few hours of physical labour in the afternoon would make him more docile in the evening. So we chopped trees together, dug out roots, attacked huge compost-heaps with shovels. And all the while Paul would ask about the timing of afternoon tea. Same as last week, I'd reply. ‘Four bloody o'clock.' Then he'd ask me again. A grown man, heavier than me, he was like a big kid. And we became a team. I'd hear him calling out my name when the group arrived and made their way down the driveway, Paul pushing one of the wheelchairs none too gently in his eagerness to start work.
It wasn't the sort of thing I'd ever planned. But I was surprised how satisfying it was. I learned that the last thing these people wanted was sympathy. They'd much rather laugh than be patronised or pitied. I'd joke with one guy about his Elvis sunnies; abuse another about his choice of football scarf; grew complicit with Paul in some of his minor crimes. (I told him one day that the supervisors would never believe his insistence that he hadn't got at the staff Nescafé, because there was a bloody great coffee ring around his mouth. Then I helped him wipe it off.)
My time at the farm – especially time spent with Paul and his mates – turned out to be perfect preparation for working with Big Issue vendors, with their myriad problems. Ironically, I had to give up one to do the other. I left the farm on my last Friday afternoon with considerable pangs, some of which were eased later when I learned that Paul, whom I was sure would miss me, apparently adapted remarkably quickly to my absence. Within weeks he was singing out ‘Julia!' just as eagerly as he'd ever called my name.
Now that Barack Obama has emphasised the importance of ‘community service' – one of his last acts before becoming president was to help paint a homeless shelter – my own experience as a volunteer seems significant.
MY CONTRIBUTION TO THE FARM WAS MINOR: one afternoon a week only goes so far. But that time helped shape some of my thoughts about work. In retrospect, much of that period between leaving The Age in 2003 and starting as editor of The Big Issue late in 2006, with my father's death falling in between, was spent doing some hard thinking about what I really wanted to do. Working for nothing at the farm, or as a fortnightly proofreader for the magazine, made it easier to go backwards (in terms of salary) when I took on the editor's job. That wasn't hard; after all, if money was what mattered most, I would never have left The Age. Staying somewhere just for the pay has always struck me as a slow death. It dismays me that several of my former colleagues, who couldn't call themselves happy in their jobs, have accepted this as their fate.
Looking back on a career path distinguished by several detours and a dead-end or two, it is clear that I've always been ambivalent about the nature of full-time work. And I've never been as concerned about pay as I probably should have been. Earning buckets of money has never been a priority. In fact, it has always seemed to me that huge salaries come at a high cost. It's simple: if someone is paying you ridiculous sums of money, they have the right to believe that they have bought you.
The summer of 1977-78, before I started at The Age, was spent as a labourer/ beach-bum in Mallacoota, near the Victoria-NSW border. I was helping a bloke who ran some holiday flats and did some abalone-diving. In return for odd jobs, supplemented by shifts at the local abalone processing plant, I had free board in a tiny caravan without wheels at the back of his property. For transport, I had a bicycle; for clothes, I needed nothing more than tee-shirt, shorts and thongs.
This was my life when a message was relayed via my employer: ring The Age. I made the call from a public phone in Mallacoota's main street. I was being offered a coveted cadetship – on the strength of cuttings I'd sent in from the uni paper. But I guessed that the personnel manager on the other end of the line could sense my ambivalence when I learned that suit and tie would be required. ‘I suppose that means I have to wear shoes, too,' I said. He thought that was a fine joke, so I decided it was wise not to let on I hadn't worn shoes for months. Standing in that phone box, with my bike leaning against it, I understood that my life was about to change dramatically, most likely forever. I was going to enter the workforce.
I got used to it. Sort of. Then again, after two and a half years I took a year's leave of absence to travel overseas, the sort of thing I possibly should have done before starting a uni course in which I really had no interest. Less than five years after coming back from overseas – having, by then, learned a truth of corporate life, that to advance you often have to leave – I quit and went to work somewhere else.
Down the track a little way, after marriage and fatherhood, I went part time – first to look after a child, then for good when I realised I preferred working from home to working in an office. And that's how it's been for much of my time since. Let's just say that over thirty-one years I've only once stayed long enough to earn long-service leave.
It may also be significant that my first day back from that long-service leave was the day I quit for good. A bit of perspective can be a very dangerous thing. I returned to my old desk, looked around, and at once it was perfectly clear: I didn't want to be there any more. I recall another moment of epiphany. This was in the US, I'm guessing around 1997. I was in transit in one of the huge hub airports, possibly Chicago, rushing from Gate 17 to Gate 53B. Suddenly I stopped and looked around, and was horrified by what I saw. There were hundreds and hundreds of people looking just like me: hurrying, hassled, with an overnight-bag on one shoulder, laptop on the other, and worried looks on their faces. This was no way to live your life. And it probably explains why, after I returned to Australia and a well-meaning editor tried to enthuse me with the prospect of further travel, that I told him I didn't want to go anywhere for a while. You see so much more when you're sitting still.
One last moment of lucidity – this time from my early days at The Age. I was waiting at the lifts. A door opened; a small group of people came out and shuffled away silently. When I commented on their lack of animation and the greyness of them all, I was told that these were members of the ‘25-Year Club' – long-serving staff members who'd been upstairs enjoying one of the perks of club membership, an annual sherry with the managing director. They seemed such a dispirited bunch that I resolved never to stay in one place long enough to earn twenty-five-year drinks.
As things have panned out, I've never been in danger of that. And I suspect fewer and fewer people ever get there. Once it was commonplace for people to stay in one place for much of their working lives; for a journalist to start as a copy-boy or girl and then, many years later, make it to editor or the ranks of senior management. Now it's expected that people will chop and change jobs and the concept of corporate loyalty seems as quaint as telex machines. These days, staff are more likely to be offered redundancy than invited upstairs for sherry. I know, too, that if a job application hit my desk from someone who'd been in the one place even for ten or fifteen years I might admire their steadfastness, but I'd also be asking questions about their lack of initiative and imagination.
ONE THING WAS CLEAR TO ME FROM THE EARLIEST DAYS at The Big Issue: I was there because I wanted to be. Being an editor is like being a footy coach. You can be sacked any time. It's an occupational hazard. If it happens to me, I'll simply move along. Then again, I may well run out of gas before anyone comes into my tiny office with some bad news. The same things that make the job challenging – the magazine being understaffed and under-resourced – can also make it exhausting. But there's something very satisfying and rewarding in working with people who could probably be earning more money elsewhere and are there, at least in part, out of affinity to a cause. I've never heard less whingeing in a workplace, which is ironic considering that the people often have more reason than most to complain. Maybe this is because there are usually vendors around the place to remind us that, in the scheme of things, a lack of flywire on an open windows or a flaky PC is really pretty small beer.
Others in our building have more to do with vendors and their welfare than me. I chat with many of the vendors, but my main role, plain and simple, is to ensure that a new magazine is ready every fortnight. My job is to give them something to sell. That's their job. And most are proud to do it. These people who have battled all kinds of demons in their lives have work, and something to do with their days. That's no small thing.
They are not always appreciative of our efforts. One morning, popping out for a coffee, I said ‘hi' to one of the more cantankerous vendors and was dumped on in response. Well, I thought, walking away, this sucks. But I also recall another occasion, when a conversation with a different Big Issue veteran ended with him saying, quite softly, ‘Thanks for what you're doing for us.' Those few words were more satisfying than any sherry upstairs with the MD. And can make mouse shit seem like nothing much at all. ♦