Guest Blog: Welcome to the Hi Vis Revolution!
At this point, you’ve just collected your uniforms & gotten your flight itinerary out to some place that neither you nor anybody else has ever heard of.
You have no idea what to expect. You’re feeling a little anxious about this whole thing. The people in the office of the company you work for aren’t making you feel any better about this. They don’t know anything about the site you’re going out to either.
Frustrating isn’t it?
The key to making FIFO work for you is Adaptability. This is where it starts. When you get to camp, it’s a different world. Its’ a world of rules, regulations & structure. Culture shock is total. It seems like people are speaking a different language. A bizarre language of acronyms. Adapting to this quickly is important.
Hang in there. It gets better. Here are a few more tips:
Stay in contact with people back home, whether by phone, Skype or even Facebook. It helps keep you connected with what is going on back at home.
Set aside time each day or so to connect with people back home. Tell them some of the things that go on up here at site. Involve people in your life away. Tell them about the food served in the mess! That’s guaranteed to lose you any sympathy! Sharing some of the simple day to day things with people back home also helps the time on your swing go by. It makes each day seem a little different. It’s all too easy for every day to become a carbon copy of the day before.
Try to work out if counting the days you have left on your swing is a good thing for you or a bad thing. I know people that count each & every day & tick them off on a calendar. Others only start counting once they get halfway through their swing. Personally, I try not to count at all.
The more I think of it, the more I think that trying to make each day a little different is a key part of long term survival in FIFO. The sheer boredom of each day being the same as the day before gets you down, so trying to make each day a little different in some way is a good thing.
Author’s Bio:
Dan’s worked in the FIFO industry as a security officer for many years on a variety of sites, including immigration detention centres. He works primarily night shift. A big part of his job is dealing with all the different people and things that happen on sites: snakes, lizards and accidents. Dan lives with depression and knows how to look after himself and stay well. He enjoys FIFO and wants others to have a positive experience of the work too.