Chapter Thirteen

I rang Fair Work on a Tuesday because my stomach hurt in the way that means either food poisoning or governance.

The hold music had the cheer of a supermarket that also sells caskets. I balanced the phone between shoulder and cheek, opened three spreadsheets I didn’t understand, and watched the kiln blink READY as if it were mocking me personally.

“Okay,” said the woman when she finally came on, polite but already tired. “Tell me what you do.”

“Ceramics classes,” I said. “Workshops. A bit of café side — coffee and olives so people don’t faint. We run evening events we call soirées. People make a pot. They go home happy.”

“And your workers?”

“Mixed. Instructors. One technician. Some general staff. No one full-time.”

It sounded like a small orchestra assembled from strangers.

She asked questions I should have asked myself months earlier. Hours. Duties. Who supervised whom. Whether we sold tickets or delivered education. Whether the food was incidental or core.

Then she asked:

“What award do you think applies?”

I heard the capital letters in it.

The Award.

I told her the truth, which is also what I had been told by the internet and my fear:

“I don’t know.”

She was kind. She walked me through it. She asked for pay rates. I read them out, wincing, because I knew they were either completely wrong or stupidly generous.

There was a pause.

Papers moved.

Keys tapped.

“Right,” she said finally. “You’re paying above the minimums for the classifications that would apply.”

I blinked at the wall.

“Sorry?”

“You’re above,” she repeated. “Not under.”

I said nothing.

The kiln blinked again, smug now.

“You will need contracts,” she added, as if rewarding me and taking the lollipop back at the same time. “Clear position descriptions. Rosters that reflect reality. Records. You know this.”

“I do now,” I said.

I meant thank you.

I also felt like crying.

I hung up and rang the bookkeeper.

He works from a room that smells like toner, eucalyptus and mercy. He wears cardigans in summer and talks to spreadsheets like they are plants that only need water.

He opened a file. Then another. Then turned the screen toward me with the calm of a man who had already saved my life.

“You’ve been paying super,” he said.

“I have?”

“Yes. On time, mostly. We nudged you once when you forgot December. Rough week.”

“What about tax?” I asked. “Am I the one paying all that tax I see leaving every week?”

He shook his head.

“PAYG withholding. That’s their tax. You just remit it.”

“So I’m not failing?”

The word came out smaller than I intended.

He smiled.

“You’re messy,” he said. “But you’re not failing.”

“Who told you to look out for me?” I asked.

He hesitated.

“No one told me. I was asked to keep an eye on the setup when you started. That’s all.”

“Asked by whom?”

He cleared his throat.

“Your husband’s accountant. Quietly. Nothing improper. He just wanted to make sure the payroll spine was straight.”

For half a second, the old fury sparked: the familiar story of being managed without permission, helped as though I were a child with scissors.

Then relief stood in front of it and blocked the view.

“Thank you,” I said.

I meant that too.

He introduced me to an HR consultant named Jess, who sounded cheerful in the way people do when they know exactly how much trouble you are in and have already priced the solution.

“We’ll draft casual contracts,” she said. “Position descriptions. Handbook. Code of conduct. Anti-bullying. Complaints pathway. Breaks and rostering. You’ll need a clock-in system.”

Then she named an app that sounded like a children’s television show but charged by the head.

“How much?” I asked.

It was less than a kiln and more than a mop.

I said yes.

The documents arrived two days later in a folder full of confidence.

There were tabs. Sections. A table of contents with a moral centre.

I read the handbook, tracing the sentences that said we care about you in ten different ways. It made me teary. I used to think care was a cup of tea.

Turns out it is also a PDF with headings.

We scheduled a staff meeting.

William made scones. Ruth arranged fruit and cheese like a polite reward for sitting still. Finn wore a scarf despite the heat. Ebony stood at the back like a statue with opinions. Marcus sat forward, hands folded, alert in a way that made the hair on my arms stand up.

Daniel arrived with a notebook full of things he was ready to worry about.

“Thank you for coming,” I said, and handed out the contracts.

They flipped. Read. Underlined.

I talked through the bits that mattered: rates, already above; super, already paid; categories, casual; breaks; the roster system that would let us breathe.

Jess joined on a laptop and smiled from a small rectangle. She used words like compliance and best practice and safe workplace.

It sounded like a lullaby for adults.

Marcus cleared his throat.

“Do we have step-ups?” he asked. “Like, if I take responsibility for locking up, is there a higher classification?”

Jess smiled.

“We can map duties and pay accordingly if responsibilities change.”

He nodded slowly, filing it away.

Daniel flicked to a page and raised his hand.

“Casual conversion?” he read. “If we want permanence?”

Jess answered carefully. “That can become available after a certain period if eligibility is met. But it’s a discussion, not automatic.”

“So not now,” Daniel said, louder than necessary.

“We’re not a factory,” Ruth said gently. “We’re a place that can’t see around corners.”

“Security matters,” Marcus said, not looking at Ruth.

“It does,” I said. “So does rent.”

I sent the contracts that night with a short note asking everyone to sign by Friday.

Then I installed the roster app.

It asked me to invite staff by entering phone numbers. I did. It asked me to assign roles. I guessed. It asked me to set permissions. I closed my eyes and clicked the option that looked least dangerous.

When I pressed publish, the app sent push notifications to everyone at once at 10:42 p.m.

Within seconds my phone lit up.

Finn: What is this.

Ruth: Oh good, an app.

Ebony: ok

Marcus: We should talk in person about hours distribution.

Daniel: My phone pinged thirteen times. Is that paid time?

I apologised, toggled a setting I did not understand, then accidentally pressed publish again.

Somewhere in Abbotsford, twenty people woke up and learned that Tuesday was now Wednesday and Wednesday had become a mystery.

The next day the app began showing me things I did not wish to know.

Who arrived at 4:02 instead of 4:00. Which breaks exceeded fifteen minutes. Who swapped a shift without approval. It congratulated me when someone clocked out on time with a digital firework that felt sarcastic.

People adapted quickly.

Finn ignored it until Ruth cornered him with an index finger. Ebony clocked in and out with the precision of a watch. William never remembered, so I set him to contractor and promised the app I would reconcile later, which is adult for lie.

Marcus found the settings.

Of course he did.

He printed the clause about rest breaks and taped it to the staff fridge. Not as a threat, exactly. More like weather.

Daniel alerted me that the app’s public holiday settings were wrong and that he would keep his own log “to compare.”

And then the handbook began to do its work in the world, which is to say it was weaponised.

“Policy says stretch breaks,” Finn announced at clean-down, rolling his shoulders like a man discovering muscles for the first time.

Ruth didn’t blink.

“Stretch while you sweep.”

“Policy says paid rest breaks, not sweeping.”

He held the document like scripture.

Daniel told me hydration was a safety issue while holding a coffee that had taken him fifteen minutes to order.

Marcus asked for another meeting to discuss classifications, this time bringing printouts.

Ruth asked for a meeting to discuss the meetings.

William asked if we could have fewer meetings and more scones.

The only person who did not use the handbook as a sword was Ebony.

She read it once, nodded, and went back to the pugmill.

“Any questions?” I asked.

“No.”

“What about the app?”

“Fine.”

Then:

“It tells the truth.”

The truth, as it turns out, is exhausting.

Small frictions multiplied.

The app pinged at odd hours. The phrase reasonable additional hours offended Finn on principle and Daniel on Facebook. Marcus kept asking careful questions. Ruth managed the whole thing with the tight smile she uses when she would prefer to throw the espresso machine through a window.

We had one Saturday where nothing worked.

The new wheels groaned. A fuse tripped. The app decided no one was rostered on, and the evening ran on volunteers who were not, in fact, volunteers.

A guest asked who was in charge.

We all pointed at each other.

After clean-down, I stood in the dark looking at Jess’s posters on the wall:

Our Values.

Respect in the Workplace.

How to Raise a Concern.

They looked like bandages on a person who had not admitted to being injured.

Monday morning, I rang Fair Work again just to make sure I had not imagined the good news.

A different voice answered. Just as kind. Just as tired.

I read out the rates again.

“You’re above,” she said.

This time I wrote it down in my own handwriting on the back of a takeaway menu and taped it behind the counter.

Jess emailed a redline tweak to the contract.

“You’re doing well,” she wrote. “It always feels worse before it feels better.”

That sentence covered most of parenting and all of hospitality.

I brought the team together again.

No scones this time.

I spoke in the voice I used with school principals when one of the children had allegedly put a banana in a heater.

I reminded them we were small. I reminded them policy exists to prevent harm, not start war. I reminded them that the stupid miracle was that we got to make bowls with strangers and call it a job.

“Please,” I said, hating the word in a workplace. “Please don’t turn this into parliament.”

There was a quiet that was not quite agreement.

Then Ruth sighed.

“Roster stands for the fortnight. Breaks as written, not as imagined. No theatrics about hydration.”

Finn raised a hand.

“Vocal health—”

“Water while you wedge,” Ruth said.

And it was settled.

Marcus asked for time next week to talk classifications.

“Fine,” I said. “Bring numbers.”

He smiled like he already had them.

That night I opened the ledger and tried to count something other than money.

Contracts signed. Handbook downloads. App pings since dinner. Fresh wedges. Laughs overheard during class. The quiet that arrived after the roller door closed.

I wrote the only numbers that mattered, crossed them out because they hurt, replaced them with smaller ones, then felt ashamed and wrote the truth back in.

At home, I told the KC what Fair Work had said in three sentences.

He nodded as if I had confirmed the weather.

“Read the lease,” he said, which is what he says when he means read the thing that binds you.

Then he kissed the top of my head on the way past the dishwasher.

I lay awake listening to a tram go by and realised what felt wrong.

Before the policies, it had been chaos held together by kindness.

Now it was order held together by suspicion.

We were the same people.

I had made them safer.

They were asking for more.

The next Soirée was full. They always were.

Marcus ran the door with the calm of a man who had decided the door was his business. Daniel stacked stools and asked if stacking was in his position description. Ruth plated olives with rage. Finn made an English teacher cry from laughing. Ebony replaced a belt on a wheel mid-class without speaking, and the room applauded as if it were magic.

William handed two tiny carved spoons to women who said they would keep them in their handbags for strength.

I watched the room soften, just a little, and thought:

Policies or not, this is still what we came for.

After everyone left, Marcus asked quietly for a word.

He showed me a printout with one line highlighted.

“You know if hours are regular for six months, casuals can request conversion to part-time.”

“I know.”

“We should talk in March.”

“Bring me a roster from six months that has ever looked the same.”

He smiled, not unkindly.

“Fair.”

Then he added, almost gently:

“You’re doing better than most.”

It sounded like a compliment and a warning.

I pretended not to notice the warning.

I turned off the lights.

The kiln blinked READY into the dark.

“So am I,” I said aloud to no one.