Choke on this ‘Karen’
by Lavinia Wehr
It all started at the Mosman Park Post office this morning. I was very excited to go to the post office as I always have great chats with the guy who runs it. He is always intrigued with what I am posting (I do PR, so I am always posting something interesting). This morning it was the Generation Ag bumper stickers which I am way too excited about. Anyway, I got in there, and if you know me, I am far from a perfectionist, so of course, the bumper stickers didn’t fit perfectly in the envelope. I explained to the Post office owner that they were promotional stickers for some of our biggest supporters, he asked me about the podcast, and I told him that it was an agricultural podcast sharing the story of people within the industry.
He was so excited and suddenly put two and two together exclaiming “you’re a farmer!”. Although I am not a farmer myself, I was able to tell him about Esperance and my family’s farm, and he was so excited to ask about what we are growing; to which I said to him that we had Canola, Wheat and Barley on the go this year. He immediately asked me about the Barley Tariffs and the effect on the season. Honestly, I was surprised that he knew about it as a lot of people pay little or no attention to agriculture in the mainstream media.
He continued to ask about what feed barley was used for to which and I said, primarily for livestock feed. At this point, a women who would have been in her mid 60’s, clad in her lulu lemons, blow-dried hair straight from her Pilates class comes in, and the post office owner lets her come to pay her bill because he wanted to continue to talk about the podcast and the tariffs. As she turned around after misunderstanding the conversation, she exclaims, “I hope they choke”. Before I had a chance to respond, ‘Karen’ was out the door and onto her next unsolicited comment making trip.
The Post officer owner looked at me confused, I could only assume that from the little she heard of the conversation, she thought we were talking about Live Export. If I had my time again, I would have hoped ‘Karen’ would have let me explain what I was talking about, but most importantly, I would ask her why she felt that way and what she actually meant. It was unfortunate to come hot on the heels of such a warm conversation with the post officer owner (who I have never seen so excited before in my life after I started talking about farming to him). It was such an unsolicited and abrupt comment made by ‘Karen’. It just goes to show that every day you’re going to meet people who have varying degrees of understanding and interest in what we do, and that there are always opportunities to advocate for our industry.
It reiterated how important this platform truly is and how we must continue to advocate for this space. Don’t be afraid to share your opinion but do make sure you share it in a way where we can ask questions to understand other points of view too. We don’t want to argue, we want to share stories and factual information. All in the hope that we can get people thinking a little bit differently about what is happening outside of their small “bubble” to keep this economy alive and food on people’s plates.
Leave your thoughts – have any of you ever experienced hate or commentary about what you do? Also cheers Karen, without you, I wouldn’t have written this post.