Things were getting impossible to handle at the factory. The boss told me to do whatever I needed to get things back in order. He instructed me to make it the first priority to ask the workers if they could work overtime. Over here, we have to ask. In Singapore we were told. Nicely at best but still told.
The workers were happy to do some overtime. Who would say no to more money? Under the labour laws here, they would be paid 1.5 times their usual rate. We would leave those debates on how protectionism will eventually bring Australia to its knees on day to another day. At the first day at least, the workers were happy to make 23 x 1.5 = A$34.50 per hour for the upcoming overtime week. One of them just bought a 3x2 house at Kelmscott on nearly 800sqm of land for A$350k. So any additional income would be welcome. The other was planning to marry a girl he met in Indonesia on his holiday and needed to raise her dowry. I didn't even need to ask.
So we started immediately and worked 2 hours extra on Thursday and knocked off at 530 pm instead of the usual 330 pm. Our 4am hrs ordeals would start on Friday. That meant we had to go to bed at 9pm to get at least 7 hours of sleep. It was tough adjusting to that timing so I ended up cutting into my bed time. I would share what I thought about this in one of the next posts perhaps.
We had done a lot of overtime before but what we were up against wasn't anything we faced previously. It would be a long, long week for me.
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