BCM313 – the future of work
As a 21 year old, without too much life experience yet, I recently had a very confronting experience as a young adult trying to find financial independence. The hospitality business I work for was badly affected, more candidly, all but destroyed by the most recent flooding of the Woronora River.
The cafe I work for is situated on the banks of the Woronora River. It has a portion of picturesque outdoor seating and also rents out kayaks and canoes. I do about 35 hours a week at this cafe and it funds my living and leisure expenses. I think back to last Christmas, over which I got Covid and spent my time indoors while the sun shone, and realised it has been raining heavily for 6 months. The cafe has very little patronage on rainy days. So already things were getting tricky. I was regularly sent home early as the cafe owner tried to manage wages. I could see how the rain was damaging furniture and had turned the car park into a swamp, so when they had a minor flood in February and then again in March I felt so sorry for them. It cost them a couple of days’ trade each time and the headache of a muddy clean up. But a few months later, on July 4th, the minor flooding changed to a more ominous and destructive event. And this event is the root of a major disruption for myself at work which has profoundly affected my experience of adult life. Or at least this is the narrative I tell myself.
On the weekend of the 2 July, just as the school holiday was about to kick off, the saturated ground, the 110% full woronra dam and the continuous rain bombs syndney was experince converged to create a 1 in 100 year flood event, unseen in the community in over 50 years. The river became a raging torrent, ripping off pontoons and jetties. The water rose extremely quickly, it poured down the mountains and rose out of storm water drains. Within minutes the whole property was flooded chest deep. People and pets were evacuated from their homes and some even rescued by the fire brigade and SES.
An Evaluation
Looking at Australian social worker and narrative therapist Michael White implemented a principle where he wrote “in order to express one’s experience of life, one must distinguish the experience from what it is not” (White 2005, p. 15). Describing this conceptual framework as “the absent but implicit” (White 2000, p. 41)
When retelling an event, experience or disruption, told to ourselves or by others, we must determine what is missing in the retelling. This can be described as ‘double listening’ and can help discover the duality within storytelling, uncovering the hidden factors of a person’s experience (Freedman 2012, p. 2). This process created a foundation for Whites narrative therapy and conceptual framework. Experiences that have already been given meaning provide a contrasting backdrop which ‘shapes’ the expression being foregrounded (Carey, Walther & Russell 2009, p.319) or in other words, looking at the opposite of a person’s experience we can better understand the experience itself.
The Aftermath
Needless to say… operations halted and as a casual employee of the cafe, my job was suspended. I was quite shocked about the state of the cafe and couldn’t imagine how it was ever going to get repaired, but afterwards, it sank in that my income had disappeared in one moment. I had all my eggs in one basket so to speak. And the basket had just dropped.
Following my recent return to work as renovations to the damage are finally complete – 2 months later. I feel more grateful than ever to have access to a job and the money that follows.
So why did losing my job affect me so much? Why did I feel the job loss beyond losing an income?
Using Whites “absent but implicit” (White 2000 p.41) theory and inverting my problem, I can see an implicit meaning. I see it challenged my perception of “being ahead of the game or living my best life’. Losing my ability to add to my savings every week, not having the extra money to do little things for myself, like getting my nails done or buying festival tickets when I want – all things that I used to be able to do because I worked hard enough to live to the fullest. Or as I believed. This all ultimately challenges the importance of working and making money for myself. As Well as my ego.
I learnt that I can get by on a lot less than I thought, and I don’t need to go to every social event to enjoy my life. Losing my job was tough but learning to accept the circumstances and go with it helped a lot. By telling this story I also learnt to look at experiences through a completely different lens as well as the importance of narrative therapy and its way to determine professional and personal values.
References
Carey, M, Walther, S & Russel, S 2009 ‘The absent but implicit: A map to support therapeutic enquiry’, Family Process, vol. 48, no. 3, pp. 319. Accessible here.
Freedman, J 2012, ‘Explorations of the absent but implicit’, International Journal of Narrative Therapy & Community Work, no. 4, pp. 1-10. Accessible here.
White, M 2000, ‘Re-engaging with history: The absent but implicit’, Reflections on Narrative Practice: Essays and interviews, Dulwich Centre Publications, Adelaide, pp.
White, M 2005, ‘Children, trauma and subordinate storyline development’, International Journal of Narrative Therapy & Community Work, no. 3 & 4, pp. 10-21. Accessible here.
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