[Inaudible word], who remembers at the beginning of 2020 when we had goals, transformations, and travel plans that we all wanted to achieve because 2020 was going to be the best year ever. Said no one. My story starts on February 26th. Last year when I moved from New Zealand to Australia for a job I got recruited for. I was super excited. I was super amped. It was a new country, a new city, a new job, a new lease on life. I was so ready for 2020 to be amazing. I touched down in Sydney and it is hot. I’m a Kiwi. We complain when it’s 21 degrees Celsius. Then this thing called Corona happened, and at the time people were confused whether it was a beer or an over-hyped flu, and then lockdown happened on the second week of the new job, and I thought lockdown was just going to be a phase. 

Then working from home, doing and trying to do the job you do in a new job in a new country, I get summoned into a meeting room I’ve never seen before. There are two HR ladies there. They’re already in tears. My boss is also there. She is also already in tears. She has driven from Sydney to Newcastle, which is a two-hour drive. She sits me down and she says, Min, I know you moved countries for this job, but unfortunately, the pandemic has taken a massive blow at this business, and I hate to say it, but I’m going to have to let you go. I was completely stunned. I felt frozen and I kept thinking I needed to write this report, but I didn’t need to anymore. All I could say was, thank you for the opportunity. I went back to my flat. I get a call from the recruiter. 

The recruiter says, Min, I am so sorry we wouldn’t be having this conversation if it weren’t for this pandemic, and I said, that’s okay. I understand. But the back of my mind, I’m thinking, why are all these people crying? I’m the one that has been made redundant. I have just moved to a new country, a new city, now recently unemployed, during a pandemic, while being Asian. The circumstances couldn’t have been better, so I thought, okay, I either can go back to New Zealand where it’s kind of safe or I give Australia another go. So begins my weeks of soul-destroying job hunt. Have you ever had to job hunt during a pandemic? That is the absolute worst because usually in my line of work, there’s only 32, 50 applicants. During the height of the pandemic, there were three to 500 applicants at any one job.

Thankfully, I did find a job in the city called Perth. Perth was never on the cards, and I don’t think I was going to be given another opportunity to travel again, so I thought, how about I give Perth a go? So when I told my friends and family I was going to travel at Perth, they said, are you sure it’s really far away and it’s really hot. They were not lying when they said it was really hot. As a Kiwi, I’m in a constant state of melting when I live in Western Australia. So I touched down in Perth at the end of June and I go through the two weeks of quarantine where I proceeded to eat chicken parma and fish and chips every second day. It was fantastic, but I put on four kilos of quarantine belly. The hardest thing about that is trying to burn it off. 

So I was passed halfway through 2020 and I thought I should be fine. Nothing else is going to happen. So I start my new job at the middle of July. I’m super perky. I’m like, okay, you know what? This is going to be awesome, but I’m super nervous because the whole interview process has been done via Zoom. I haven’t actually met anyone. I’ve actually never physically been on site, so I get there 15 minutes early just to make sure I’ve got the right place. I park my car and there’s no other cars around. I’m like, I’m sweet. I’ve got this. So I step out of my car and I walk 10 metres away from my car, but then I hear this sound, it goes screeechh. 

I turn around and I was like, what is that? There is a massive U truck that has just reversed into my car, my car that I had to transport from New South Wales via sea and train to Perth. I had to compose myself because technically I haven’t started my day yet. I approach the U truck driver and the only thing that he can say is, ah, mate, I didn’t see a car there. I went up to him. The only thing I could say was, bro, there are no other cars around. His name was Murray. We exchanged phone numbers and I said, Murray, I will give you a call later at night. I need to start my new job. So I start my new job and the new HR lady is there and I told her what happened, and the only thing she could say is welcome to the company because it’s such a usual thing to have your car backed up by a massive U truck. Regardless of that, the first day was great. I go back to my flat. I give Murray a call. He doesn’t pick up. It goes straight to his voicemail. His voicemail goes like this, 10 seconds of pure silence. Then he says, fuck off. 

So I’m thinking Western Australians have very concise but rude voicemails. You have to remember that Murray is the third western Australian I’ve ever met. Thankfully, our insurances have sorted everything out and Murray no longer parks the staff car park. After that little incident, I thought, okay, this should be fine in this new job. Three months after, my first day is middle of September, there is a three day work conference, and on the first day we go to visit dairy farms and at dairy farms there are a lot of cows. In my line of work, this is what we have to do. So I’m thinking, how about I do some community service for work by milking a cow for whatever reason, everyone else is a good 50 metres away because they have common sense and there’s at least 60 of us in our team. So I go approach the first cow with the milking apparatus and she’s happy, and I’m like, okay, great. Sweet. I’m done. I’m going to walk away now. But the dairy farmer says, oh, you’ve got the hang of it. How [about] you milk another one? Can’t say no to a dear old sweet dairy farmer. So I go and approach this second cow. I’m going to call this cow Daisy. I think this cow was a racist cow because this cow probably knew I wasn’t from Perth. Daisy had so much shit on its tail that I went to approach Daisy, and then this one sound was going to change my life forever. It went like this.

I was covered head to toe in cow shit. The dairy farmer looks at me and goes, oh, you’ve got cow shit on you. I’m surprised that she’s surprised to see cow shit. But then the rest of the team sees the whole thing happening and they go, oh my gosh, Min’s got shit on him. I knew at that point, my authority at this new job has been forever compromised. I am the new guy that has travelled interstate that has been shat on by a cow, the only guy that has been shat on by a cow. Just when I thought it was going to get worse, it does because on the second day was the actual conference and everyone gave their presentations and at the end of their presentations they all said, oh, we’re really busy with all these projects, but at least we are not getting shat on like Min. 

This was one of those, I’m going to get really thick skins at the end of this exercise. But then later that evening, our leadership team tells us, okay, everyone, you have to perform skits based on our team values. One of team values is get shit done. When she said that, everyone looked at me because I was the target and I will perform a mini reenactment of that skit. They pretended to be in an invisible toilet. They pretended to run out of toilet paper. Then they looked down and they said, oh man, we didn’t see you down there. I know this was one of those character-building exercises to the extreme or just hazing in a new company, but objectively I think it’s pretty funny, but I’m the butt of the joke. I think it was actually risen pretty well. I felt my whole entire self-esteem, my whole confidence just thrown out the window. 

I was like, okay, I am so done. But then one of my colleagues says, Min, do your standup. Do your standup. Because I had done standup back in New Zealand at that moment. I had two options. One run back to my hotel room and cry and pretend it was all a bad dream or give them the best improvised standup set they had ever seen. I decided to go with the latter because when you’ve been shat on a cow, you’ve got nothing to lose. So I gave them an improvised standup set, blah, blah, blah, detailing my encounter with Murray all the way up to the point with facing Daisy. On the third day, people came up to me and he said, Min, your improvised standup was the highlight of the whole conference. I felt some redemption and I felt like things kind of came full circle, and that was a whole reflection of my 2020, because in life you can see bullshit coming. You can acknowledge the bullshit, but it doesn’t mean you have to accept the bullshit, and I think I did achieve my goals. I achieved some unintended travel plans and definitely went through a massive transformation and my key learning from it is that shitty things are not all that bad. We all can learn something from it. It allows us to tell stories like this. Thank you for listening to my story. 

Thank you for listening. Centre for Stories is a not-for-profit organisation with charitable status. Our team is small and nimble and we love what we do. To help us continue doing what we love, consider a small donation. You can donate at centerforstories.com.