At Wazzer’s work on Monday morning, the waitrons are bundling cutlery and paper napkins together, using water so that the paper napkins stay wrapped. They’re supposed to use just a dab of water, but these bundles will be mummified like papier-mache, they are all so distracted by one raconteur. “So she’s moving to Australia next week and doubling her salary! Doubling it!”<\/p>\n
“Yeah, but, to work at the KFC in a mining town?”<\/p>\n
“At least it’s not cold!”<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Wazzer is trying to wrap something up quickly. “Mmmkay. So that’s the three traps, and you fumigated along the…yep…all right. I’ll send your invoice through this week, mate. Better check your parking – they’re ticketing like fiends lately,” she says. It would be great if the exterminator moved his labeled van before <\/em>any customers seriously arrived.<\/p>\n But the exterminator is distracted by the jolly waitrons. “Any of you going to Aussie?”<\/p>\n Giggles and denial from everyone except Rosie, who just shakes her head, and the loudest girl, who says, “Aussie blokes! The odds are good, but the goods are odd.”<\/p>\n “You might meet a Kiwi. I’m going over soon. Bloody paradise if you’re in my field.” The exterminator sighs, longingly, “Rats as long as your arm. Roaches the size of playing cards. Snakes, too. All the work you’d want in the pest field. Queensland for me!”<\/p>\n Amidst the shrieks and laughter, Wazzer notices that Rosie stays quiet. The Christchurch emigre was visibly shaken up by the additional round of severe quakes there last week. Poor little chook<\/em>, she thinks. When Rosie is bundling the cutlery mummies into the prep station, Wazzer says, “Hey, want to go to a party with me this Saturday? Good wine, lots of guys? Some friends of mine, they’ll like you.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" At Wazzer’s work on Monday morning, the waitrons are bundling cutlery and paper napkins together, using water so that the paper napkins stay wrapped. They’re supposed to use just a dab of water, but these bundles will be mummified like papier-mache, they are all so distracted by one raconteur. “So she’s moving to Australia next […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[40,22,47],"class_list":["post-279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-shortfic","tag-australia","tag-jobs","tag-migrants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itsawellingtonlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/itsawellingtonlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/itsawellingtonlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itsawellingtonlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itsawellingtonlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/itsawellingtonlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itsawellingtonlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itsawellingtonlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itsawellingtonlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}