The Day I Met Dom

How quitting a dream job led me to my love of travel, my independence, a crazy, loud and chaotic workplace, and my husband.

I’ve never been a particularly confident person. I constantly doubt my own abilities and I’m usually the first one to make jokes about my appearance, personality and demeanor so that no-one else can make them about me. I don’t see myself as brave, or interesting and I quite often quit at things before someone has the chance to tell me I suck at it. Yikes... How’s that for a mid-week self-assessment.

I guess that was why it was a bit of a surprise to everyone, and to myself when I decided to leave the only country I had ever known and go to Africa, alone, then on to Europe and finally South America.

My boss at the time had offered me a share in his company. It was insane, I was early twenties and was working as a photographer, freelancing at weddings & events and working with some really talented people as a second shooter. Photography was what I wanted to do with my life. I had done the hard yards and achieved my Advanced Diploma in Photography. I had a good reputation amongst the photographers I worked with and was getting offered work regularly. I thought I was loving it. So why then, when offered an opportunity to own part of a photography business that would secure my future and set me on the right path, did I want to run?

I told my boss I would think about it and let him know. I had already decided in my own head that there was no way I would be able to succeed in this role, that I would suck and that ultimately I would let him down and I would be a total embarrassment to myself. I just had to come up with a reason ‘why’ that I was happy with saying out loud.

The previous years I had been planning an ‘around the world adventure’ with a friend that never eventuated. I still wanted to travel and I figured I didn’t need to do it with a friend – I could just do it myself. After all, traipsing through a foreign country on my own was a far less terrifying prospect than being part-owner in a business and having other people rely on me.

So, back I went to my boss and told him the news. It didn’t go down so well. There was a lot of yelling from him, some pretty crushing looks of disappointment and a strange moment when he asked if I was dying from cancer (I had recently cut all my hair off, so I can kinda see where he was coming from). I also told him that I was going to have to quit photography to find a full-time job, one that provided regular hours, sick leave and holiday pay. It was a pretty tense lunch break to say the least. It didn’t help that I had chosen to tell him in the middle of a wedding we were shooting, while we were sitting in his car scoffing our unhealthy lunch of mars bars and coca cola.

I then set about finding a full time job. Great plan Amy... the only skills you have are in photography, and you’ve just left a perfectly good photography job. Smart move kid. Eventually I found a company that was willing to give me an interview – this was back in the day when you could still find jobs in the paper and went in for a chat first. Crazy right?

It was a timber yard and they needed a worker in the table top manufacturing shed. I arrived and met with one of the supervisors. At the time I was around 21 or 22, just over 150cm tall and weighed 45kg. I didn’t look like I could lift a pencil, let alone a table top, and I was the only female there outside of the office. I didn’t have a forklift ticket, or any skills in woodworking, but I told them I was willing to work, could pick things up quickly (total lie) and was happy with the pay rate. For some insane reason I was given the job. I will never forget the pain I felt that first week.

I had known hard work in the past. Being the second shooter at a wedding is a fairly demanding job – you have to carry ALL of the bags (well, if you had a boss like mine you did), we’re talking at least 15kgs of gear, up and down hills, along beaches, down rock groins, all the while being yelled at to “HURRY UP”, You get the idea.

If the groomsmen offered to help, my boss would reply with “no, she’s fine, that’s what I’m paying her for” and he would then look at me with a shit eating grin and wave at me with his empty hands as he walked off.

On top of that, you’re pretty much a TA – you have to know what the main shooter is going to need next, and pre-empt them asking for it. You have to also be shooting images of the event yourself because as one boss yelled at while I was standing staring into space after a particularly late night out clubbing the night before “I’m not paying you to stand there and fucking look pretty”. Plus it was the days of film, so you had to be on top of labelling and loading new rolls of film, making sure all the kit was clean, doubling as a light stand from time to time and being the Boss’ catering manager. I’m surprised I didn’t have to wipe his ass as well. I make it sound terrible. It really wasn’t, I loved it, but anyway, the point is, it was physically demanding, but it was only on the weekends, not every day. During the week I was doing post-production work, putting together albums – sitting in a chair. A comfortable chair. In an air-conditioned office.

Working in a timber yard was like nothing I had experienced before. I loved it and the physical aspect, but my legs hated me for making them stay in a standing position all day long. They ached and burned, and when I would get into the car at the end of the day, the pain would shoot up my thighs and into my hips. After the first week or so, my body adapted and I got into the groove of things.

The guys in the shed realised I wasn’t afraid of using the machinery, or swearing like a drunken sailor, and had half a brain, so I was welcomed relatively quickly into the fold. There were still a few who thought I had no place being there, so I made it my mission to prove them wrong. I was let loose on the forklifts, which I’m pretty sure was the most fun I have ever had there. The slight OCD I have came in really handy for keeping the timber in the racking tidy and before long I was running the table top section with a couple of guys under my supervision.

The months ticked by and I really settled in. I hadn’t told anyone at work that I was planning a journey that would take me away permanently, but in the background I was collecting brochures, pouring over my atlas, researching visa applications for working abroad and talking to banks about how much I could borrow if I couldn’t save enough in time.

On days that I had completed my work orders early, I would help the guys in the next section up who worked in machining the timber and running it though the moulding machine – Joe and John.

Joe was brash, loud, opinionated and a bit of a donkey to be honest. He was around 60 when I met him and he was originally from Italy. His favourite things to do at work were:

1. Use the push stick (a random piece of timber you used to push the timber you were machining through the moulder to make sure you don’t mangle your hands in the blades) as a pretend guitar and do some epic ‘air guitar’ moves in my general direction while singing loudly. I could never hear what he was singing because the machines were running, but Joe always thought it was pretty funny.

2. Yelling ‘pappagallo’ at me every time he saw me, regardless of whether it was at work, or at the shops outside of work hours. I can only assume it’s because he thought I talked too much. Kinda accurate.

3. Piss and moan about how crap life is in Australia and how we all suck and that Italy is better. I once asked why he didn’t just move back and retire over in Italy. “Nah, it’s fucked there” he said. Strange guy.

Which brings me to John... I think the best way to describe John is to use the word ‘immaculate’. He was probably around 50 years old and would come to work in the morning with perfectly pressed pants, a clean jumper and a spotless safety shirt. A stark contrast to Joe and I who were constantly covered in dust and grime and looked like neither of us owned a washing machine, or if we did, had no idea how to operate one. For over a year I was constantly finding new glue and grease smears on my clothes, in my hair and on my face (no-one would ever tell you about those ones).

But John, no way. That guy was immaculate. Always neat, always tidy, always polite and always kind. Even his manners were immaculate. He took great pride in his work, his work station and the way he presented himself. He was a wood machinist and he kept those machines running perfectly, which was impressive because half of them were bloody ancient. John taught me a lot, including how to drive a forklift fully loaded with huge packs of timber through a narrow doorway, how to sharpen the tools correctly and how to respond to a cranky old prick (the owner of the company) while maintaining an air of dignity. I liked the guy. He was awkward and shy, and holding a conversation with him could be tricky at times, but he was amazing at his job and would always try to help me out if I asked.

John’s favourite things to do at work were:

1. Do his job to near perfection

2. Keep his workspace so clean you could eat off the floor

3. Put up with Joe’s bullshit all day long

4. Be as quiet as humanly possible

One day in particular always sticks out in my mind, it was the day I met my husband. Of course I didn’t know that at the time, I had a boyfriend and was planning on travelling the world for the next two years. So there I was, helping Joe and John to tail out some 90x90 Batu posts from the four-sider. It was heavy, hot, noisy and painful work. I had already pulled a splinter half the length of my thumb out from the side of my thumbnail and my shoulders were starting to ache from all of the lifting. I watched as a guy wearing a pair of work shorts barely covering his knobbly knees, a baseball cap pulled down over his curly dark hair and a stinker of a look on his face, stalk into the shed and tell us we needed to pick up the pace because the order needed to be done by the end of the day. I felt like shouting “well thank you very much, captain obvious”, but in the interest of keeping my job, I kept quiet. After he had given his orders and completely ignored me, he left. I asked them who that was and they answered with “That’s Dom, he’s the Foreman”. I thought nothing more of it and kept going with my work.

Over the next few weeks he would visit the sheds as part of his job and we became friends. I was still with my boyfriend and he had a girlfriend. Turns out he wasn’t an arrogant asshole, he just worked with complete idiots all day long, so it was easier to approach everyone with the same, gruff, no-nonsense manner. And he had this amazing talent to pull out a total resting bitch face. It was so intimidating that you would see people approaching him with what you knew was going to be a Stupid Fucking Question; they would take one look at that RBF and turn around and walk right back in the other direction. He would smile and say “good huh?” Good? No mate. Bloody genius.

Time ticked by and my boyfriend decided he didn’t like me anymore, so he dumped me. I think I was sad for a day or two – then my sister put on a funny movie one afternoon; we ate chocolate and popcorn, and by the end of the movie, I was no longer sad. Hahaha thanks Emma.

As it turns out, Dom had broken up with his girlfriend as well. I had no plans to start seeing anyone else because my big trip was fast approaching. But, “as fate would have it”, we started seeing each other after another six months or so. And there you have it. That’s how I met Dom. I still went on my trip, albeit one and a half years shorter than originally intended… because I got homesick and I was fast running out of money. So I came back to Australia without telling Dom, roughly one week before Christmas, and scared the living shit out of him by sitting on his front porch and calling out “hi” when he got home one afternoon. Best day ever.

I regret a few things in my life, but I definitely don’t regret quitting my photography job, to work in manual labour at a timber yard, because that led me to Dom, and the life I have now. Which is pretty damn amazing. And, thanks to Dom, I am a more confident person. I still like to make fun of myself, and deflect discomfort with humour. I sometimes find myself wanting to quit before I even start, but Dom is always there, telling me “you’ve got this”. So thanks Dom, you great big (pretend) grumpy bastard.

Love ya guts x