<
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/mar/25/furniture-removalist-experience-stories>
"My “wilderness years” began when I lost a job I loved hosting a daily radio
show in Melbourne, then spent a decade slowly rebuilding my broadcasting
career. That meant most of my on-air appearances went back to being unpaid, and
the rent wasn’t going to cover itself.
To survive financially, I spent 10 years saying yes to almost every job I
stumbled across: pub trivia host, wedding DJ, babysitter, copywriter,
documentary reviewer, arts event moderator. But the gig that changed my life
was the years I spent as a furniture removalist.
I decided to work as a removalist because I thought it might be a cheaper
alternative to hiring a personal trainer. Better than that, because I’d be the
one getting paid to get ripped. Then the pandemic hit, all my entertainment and
event-based work disappeared overnight, and suddenly I was a 39-year-old woman
spending her days hauling other people’s lives around.
Some of what I learned was about the furniture itself. For example, you’ll
never catch me owning a glass dining table. They are so heavy and difficult to
move, I eventually started fantasising about outlawing them. To justify this I
came up with a secondary argument: what kind of sick pervert demands to be able
to peer at the crotches and feet of their guests during a dinner party? Let
people scratch themselves subtly in peace."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
