A Glimpse of Future Problems

After a year of attracting remarks about how hard-working and what a great work-ethic Germans had, Claudia stopped working with me. This was a result of the company breaking up and part of it going into receivership while the other bit (our bit) restructured to include all the service department staff from the main retail branch. We now had extra staff who had been there longer and they got to stay while Claudia left. I think that she was quite relieved. The work was very heavy and not a challenge and she was starting to feel that she should try to improve herself a bit more. In the beginning, like anyone who has worked in a non-native language environment, she had had concerns about her ability to deal with people off the street - understanding them and being sure that she was being understood. Time spent with us had helped this, but she did not have to deal with that many customers and still looked like a startled rabbit when someone asked her something. It was time for her to move on and out of her comfort-zone anyway. For a couple of months she messed around not knowing what to do and making half-hearted attempts to find out about things that related to the study that she had done. I did not pressure her because she struggled with a feeling of despair that I put down as a lack of confidence that she would eventually get over. There were a few 'I-am-useless-I-don't-know-what-to-do' crying sessions, but I took those as normal insecurity.

Claudia, as I mentioned in a previous posting, had been captivated by the Humpback Whales that stopped in on Hervey Bay on their journey back south to Antarctica. A sort of pit-stop for the new calves that were born a little further North and needed to build up a bit of strength for the long trip South. There is a bay called Platypus Bay, between Fraser Island and the coast where the whales come in to rest. The boats would head out from Hervey Bay's Marina with excited viewers who would get to spend a day, or a half-day out watching the whales. When we were out on Princess II the previous year, I asked the skipper where he got his two crew members from. He had said that they were just seasonal workers who had applied before the season started. By now we were approaching June and I suggested to Claudia that she apply and perhaps spend the three months of the season in Hervey bay and I would visit her on the weekends. There followed months of hand-wringing and 'I can't' arguments that I had to counter before she plucked up the courage to call. Once she did call and apply, more weeks passed and she fretted and stressed as she waited to hear back. All her hopes were on this and I was so afraid of the state Claudia would be in if she did not get the job. It became a little unnerving. The skipper, of course, had no such sense of urgency. For him, whale and dolphin-loving girls would be a dime-a-dozen and he would never have had trouble filling his crew roster. Cold comfort to the two of us. I was coming home to find Claudia tearful and asking whether I thought that she should call or write again, or what to say if she called. It was nerve-wracking.