The Christmas rush - seasonal working in New Zealand

It was just like any ordinary year. I dusted off another year of studying and was on my 3-month holiday until I started university again. I was low on income and needed to use my time wisely as life as a student is difficult especially in the financial area, most of the time youre broke due to accommodation costs, food, university related costs and travel costs. Nothing is easy and I sure learnt that the hard way. I ended up looking for every single job possible, my job experience isnt great and all the places I applied which were mostly retail, needed experience as it was the Christmas rush. The time of the year where every single retail shop prepares for the climax of the year and prepare their scenery and prices to suit the time, they had no interest in training someone from scratch. After e-mailing a couple of places with no sudden response, it was clear I would not get any retail jobs. I started looking for other types of work, I went on to backpacker’s board and looked for the jobs there in Auckland but there was nothing that I could actually do, there were jobs available but once again a necessary amount of experience was required so I just shrugged off the idea of actually finding a job again. I started looking forward to University starting up again. It was around mid-December where I got a wakeup call, I realized that I had failed a few papers in my second semester and I had to redo them but I was lacking the necessary amount of money to retake the papers. it hit me hard. I felt depressed at times as I really needed to finish off my second year of University to advance otherwise I would never get my degree and I would be jobless without experience too. I started the search up again and literally was on top of it day in day out, it was hard. Employment in NZ is not the best in my own opinion, it’s hard for students to find a job especially when most jobs require a certain period of time to work under contracts such as a minimum of 6 months. I kept searching but in all honestly I thought I would never find a suitable job. I stumbled upon Seasonaljobs.co.nz and I had a look at the list of jobs that were listed in the north island, most were up to date and I saw one listed that said they needed a couple of egg farmers. I started at the link for a while, questioning my morals. Ive never had any experience on a farm, nor any experience much at all. I read up on the details and the only thing that fell prey unto my eyes was the “No experience necessary”. I was quite shocked to actually come across a job that doesnt require experience. I texted the person that had put up the advertising and he gave me a test run. It was in Henderson on a distant farm. Was a couple of South-Asian men. They looked like very hard workers. They showed me how to extract the eggs from the chicken and how to make sure they dont crack when taking them, making sure not to shock the chicken so they dont break it. How long it takes for the eggs to become eatable, not letting the eggs ripen too much was the key. It was hard work. Very hard work, or so I thought. A couple of trucks would come by every so often to pick up the eggs that were collected and they were taken away to be sold in stores. There were a lot of trucks. Ive never really experienced any work like this but at the end of the day it was satisfying. Finally, being able to work felt really good. I felt like I would get somewhere. The days were very long though, It was extremely busy too, there were a couple of other people they had hired. They looked a bit older than me. They were very nice though. The trucks kept coming and we kept piling up the eggs. It was the Christmas rush I tell you. I never really realized how hard these people work just to get eggs out in the supermarkets. People that work in agricultural and farm areas need to be shown a bit more gratitude. They work really hard for everyone to make sure they get what they need. Im more appreciative now when I see eggs in the supermarket. I continued working until about mid-March, University was starting up again. I was happy that i was able to collect enough money to retake the papers I had failed and I was happy that I was able to find a job in the farm area, it really opened my eyes to a lot of things I was blinded to. I appreciate every farmer now, very much.

Ahmed Sooran