Jade Jurewicz is the proud owner of over $600 worth of audio books, all factual and intelligent reads of course (hmmm). She is a lover of coffee and sunny days, eats a jar of pickles a week and enjoys a good-old My Kitchen Rules rant with her lady co-workers each morning.
We live in an age where the combination of a few letters and vowels can abbreviate words that our brains immediately process into meaning; lol, rofl, yolo… the list goes on.
Even though we are no longer hormonal teenagers and use them in our daily vocabulary, we still miraculously know what they mean.
One that has become common in our adult language, in particular over the past few years, is FIFO.
Whilst those four letters may have a different meaning for each individual human being, I think there is one meaning that springs to mind and if we were in a colourful cartoon, dollar signs would appear infront of our eyes.
Money.
We all know a FIFO worker or perhaps feel we know the blokey stereotype and whether or not they are working their butt off to save for a house or working to party on the shores of Seminyak during their week off.
What doesn’t spring to our mind from the four letters are the people they leave behind when they are working, eating, sleeping and working.
Ok so this is going to sound a little dramatic (like a Hollywood war story perhaps) but there are women, men and children who count the minutes till their loved one arrives home.
Love letters (facebook messages) are composed, gazing at happy couples in the grocery shop occurs (followed by a glass of red wine.. at home of course) and clichéd tears drop whilst eating bowls of muesli late at night and watching sex and the city episodes.
As an ex-FIFO worker wife I know only too well the barrel of emotions that one feels when their partner is only in their life for half of the year.
It starts with the emotion of happiness, enjoyed when they arrive home and you get a waft of their unwashed hair for the first time.
To excitement as you gobble down the most expensive breakfast at your favourite delicious cafés (compared to the single coffee your uni student silver-change budget can usually afford).
To relaxation as you sit back and enjoy movie after movie and sugary treat after sugary treat in their company.
To anxiety as you realise you had not even looked at any uni work nor bothered to use your gym membership that week.
Back to relaxation as another movie commences and another bowl of chocolate-y connoisseur icecream is dished up.
Anxiety pops up for another appearance when you realise it is the last night you will wake up next to their smelly breath, but not care in the slightest.
To sheer annoyance when the sweet sounds of Bon Iver waft out from their phone at 5am, alerting you that it is time to get up and drive to the airport.
Back to sadness as you silently wave them off, before a quick flick back to frustration as you have to pay for the $7 parking ticket as you leave the airport.
Loneliness, guilt, love, grumpiness all pop up over the next few weeks as they are back on site and you are left with piles of assignments and limited funds.
There are also the odd girls night out where Beyonce’s single ladies might get the feeling of ‘girl power’ and ‘independence’ flowing through your dancing limbs and thoughts of your loved one disappear.
Only to reappear into your tired and carb-craving body as the sun rises.
After conversing with friends who also suffer from this predicament, our experiences are uncannily similar, minus our choice of sugary treat.
I’ve also learnt since meeting Rio Tinto’s media liason that there are over 500 FIFO families in Busselton alone, which means endless local family members are too missing a loved one.
So, I encourage you to understand that while some FIFO workers work to ‘yolo’ it up on their breaks, others are working to support their loved ones and to buy their wives as much chocolate icecream as their heart desires.
Has your life been affected by FIFO work? What are your biggest pros and cons of the FIFO lifestyle? Leave a comment below or email us your thoughts to ross.verne@fairfaxmedia.com.au
