This Week in America – Two Songs From Home

This week in America, I started a new job at a self-storage facility just ten minutes from home — or, as I've discovered, exactly two songs away.

What I thought would be a story about starting a new job quickly became a story about people.

In my first week, I met a woman from Augusta who shared stories about life during Masters week, the owners of a local Chick-fil-A who reminded me why American friendliness still surprises me, a trucking company owner from Kentucky who travels the country watching his granddaughter dance, and a Vietnamese immigrant who understood exactly what it feels like to build a life far from home.

Along the way, I learned some unexpected things about the storage industry, why some people end up living in storage units, and how these buildings often hold far more than furniture and cardboard boxes.

Sometimes they hold entire chapters of people's lives.

As an Australian living in Tennessee, this week reminded me of something I've noticed again and again about America: some of the most interesting stories are found in ordinary conversations with ordinary people.

In this episode:

• Starting an hourly job for the first time in over 20 years
• What Augusta is really like outside Masters week
• Why Chick-fil-A owners are exactly what you'd expect
• Meeting a trucking company owner with 2,000 trucks
• A conversation with a Vietnamese immigrant in Tennessee
• The surprising reality of the self-storage industry
• Why some people end up living in storage units
• Missing family while returning to work full-time
• The stories hidden behind everyday encounters

If you've ever moved countries, started over, changed careers, or simply enjoyed hearing people's stories, I think you'll enjoy this one.

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Thanks for listening. Hoo roo maties.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

This week in America, I started a new job. Now, before anyone panics, no, this isn't a dramatic life announcement. I'm not selling everything I own and disappearing into a storage unit. Although, after this week, I have learned that apparently some people do try that. No, I started working at a self-storage facility about 10 minutes away from home, or as I've discovered, exactly two songs away. That's now how I measure distance. Not miles, not kilometers, songs. So it's a two-song commute. Three, if I hit a train that's going across the crossing. You better take cover. I was surprisingly nervous driving there on that first morning, partly because I haven't had an hourly job in over 20 years. I'd always been salaried, never had to worry about punching in and punching out. 20 years is long enough for fashions to disappear, come back and disappear again. So I'd convinced myself this was going to feel strange. And it did. But maybe not in the way that I expected. So the facility isn't even open yet. It's a three-story brand new building. The place smells like fresh paint and concrete. Give it six months, it'll probably smell like cardboard boxes and people's life choices. There's construction people everywhere. Half the signs aren't even up yet. The hallways have an echo to them. It feels less like a business and more like someone accidentally built a giant maze to go and play hide and seek in. What surprised me most wasn't the building itself, it was the people. So the woman training me is from Augusta, Georgia, home of the Masters. Now, I've never been to the Masters. I play golf, but badly enough to respect the professionals and regularly apologize to trees and bunkers. But she used to bartend there during tournament week. And according to her, Augusta basically transforms into another planet for a week or so every year. Celebrities everywhere. Houses renting for ridiculous amounts of money. People trying to sneak onto the course, police chasing them away. Tourists getting absolutely cooked in the hot Georgia sun. And apparently egg sandwiches, for reasons I still don't entirely understand, egg sandwiches are a big deal down there. Millions of people around the world watch the Masters and see perfect grass, green jackets, and golf. But she remembers drunk tourists and egg sandwiches. Kind of feels like the more interesting version of the story. And she also told me something that did surprise me a little bit. But most of the year, Augusta is just another part of Georgia. I kind of like that in a way. She talked about how the city gets cleaned up for Masters Week and the roads look better, the gardens look better, everything gets polished. Businesses make a fortune. And then she mentioned something else that also made me think a bit. The homeless population of Augusta gets moved away from the areas around the tournament. So for one week, the version of the city that the world sees isn't necessarily the version that locals see the rest of the year. They also did that back in Sydney for the 2000 Olympic Games. In fact, my hometown on the south coast of New South Wales had many of the homeless people in Sydney sent there as it's the last stop on the train line south. So I guess that sort of thing is kind of universal. A couple of days later, I met the owners of a local Chick-fil-A restaurant, and they came in to introduce themselves, offered to provide catering for events, and uh the offer was nice, but what really struck me was how friendly they were. And I know if you're listening back in Australia, you're rolling your eyes now because I've talked about American friendliness before, especially at Chick-fil-A. But to be truthful, the owners were exactly like the staff. The same warmth, the same energy, the same genuine interest in taking time out of their day to talk to you. So either they've all been exceptionally friendly there, or they're running the longest customer service training session in human history. And I also met a man who owns a trucking company out of Louisville, Kentucky. He has 2,000 trucks. 2,000. I think if I owned 2,000 trucks, I'd mention it every five minutes. G'day guys, I'm Michael. Uh, did I tell you I own 2,000 trucks? After talking for a few minutes, what do we end up discussing? His granddaughter. She's a dancer. He travels to competitions to watch her, which immediately reminded me of my own daughter, Georgia. Because it's funny how often that happens. You meet someone through their job, then five minutes later, you're talking about family. And there was another guy from Vietnam, and he's been in America for 28 years. And we were walking towards his storage unit when he suddenly asked me where I was from. Because apparently some of the words that I use don't sound particularly American, which was shocking news to me. I've worked very hard to maintain my reputation as Australia's leading expert in sounding Australian. Now he thought I was European. And when I told him I was Australian, he burst out laughing. It wasn't in a mean way, it was in more of a, well, that explains it sort of way. And he told me that he came from Vietnam, and I could tell that as well from his accent. But that also instantly changed the conversation. Not because we come from the same place, but because neither of us did. And we started talking about moving countries, building a life somewhere else, getting used to things that don't quite make sense. Missing certain foods or certain places, what it's like to miss people. At one point he patted me on the back and laughed and said, We're both a very long way from home, my friend. And in that moment, we both knew exactly what he meant. An Australian and a Vietnamese bloke standing in Tennessee talking beside a storage unit. You couldn't really plan that. But that's America sometimes. People arriving from completely different corners of the world and somehow ending up in the same conversation. I also learned a few things about the storage industry. So apparently the auctions now are mostly online, which was a bit disappointing because TV led me to believe every storage auction involved shouting, drama, someone finding pirate treasure or Roman coins. Turns out most of them involved old furniture and junk that people are just trying to get rid of. The other thing I learned kind of surprised me. Some facilities, particularly around larger cities, people will try to live in the units. At first, I kind of thought that was a joke. I mean, who looks at a storage unit and thinks, yep, home? But apparently it happens often enough that staff know what signs to look for. And unusual amount of rubbish, food wrappers, blocked drains, rodents showing up where they normally wouldn't. And sometimes it's discovered quickly. Sometimes it's not. The more I thought about it, the sadder I really became because nobody grows up dreaming of living in a storage unit. You don't end up there because everything went according to plan. And it costs around 200 bucks for a decent sized unit that I could see someone living in. When you compare that to the average rent prices here in Nashville of $1,800 a month, I guess you can start to see the attraction. Then looking at this, what struck me was how similar it felt to some of the things that I saw during my 20-odd year banking career. And when I worked in banking, people often walked through the door during difficult chapters of their life. Divorces, scams, deaths in the family. And the money was usually the obvious problem. But underneath it was almost always a life that was in transition. And storage feels surprisingly similar. The units themselves are just boxes. What they're really holding are people's in-between periods. When someone's moving an estate or downsizing, and sometimes it's furniture, sometimes it's an entire life packed into a space behind a roller door. Underneath the locks and boxes and moving trucks, you're still dealing with people trying to navigate change. And if there's one thing I've learnt over the years, it's that everybody looks like they've got it together right up until the moment they tell you their story. Now, speaking of figuring out what comes next, I spent most of the day looking at the clock. Not because I wanted to go home, but because I kept calculating how much I'd earned. Another hour, more money for me. Another hour, yeah, that's dinner covered. It felt strangely satisfying and slightly terrifying at the same time. Then I'd do another calculation. How much I've made so far, how much was left in the day, how much tomorrow would be worth. And then I'd think about my wife, Nikki. One of her clients is worth as much as my entire day, which is slightly humbling. Although, to be fair, she spent years building that business too. I also discovered one huge advantage over my old banking roles. I can actually go home for lunch. Six minutes home, six minutes back. I sat there at my own kitchen table, saw the girls who were home on summer holidays, had almost an hour to reset, then went back. I never had that before. In banking, lunch often meant eating at my desk while simultaneously solving 30 problems at once. This felt completely different. At the same time, I realized something else. I really miss the kids. I've been around them a lot over the last couple of years for pickups and dance, random conversations, being home and just being present. And then all of a sudden, I wasn't. So being able to see them in the middle of the day felt surprisingly important. And by the end of the day, I was exhausted. To be honest, I was absolutely buggered. Meanwhile, Georgia and Brianna were bouncing off the walls, wanting sleepovers and water parks. I had an app. They appeared ready to invade a small country. Where children get their energy from remains one of humanity's greatest mysteries. Scientists have studied black holes. They've split atoms, they've put people on the moon, and yet somehow nobody has explained why a child can run at full speed for 14 consecutive hours and then turn around and ask what's next. So what did I learn this week? Honestly, I thought this week was going to be about starting a new job, but it wasn't. It was all about people. A woman from Georgia, a man from Vietnam, a trucking company owner from Kentucky, restaurant owners and contractors. Somehow the thing I've enjoyed most this week hadn't been the job itself. It's been the conversations. After years of screens and analytics, comments, and editing timelines, I'd forgotten how enjoyable it is to simply meet people and to hear their stories, to learn where they're from, to discover that everybody has a life that's far more interesting than it first appears. So my commute is still only two songs long. But after a week, I already know this. The most interesting thing in that building isn't what's inside the units, it's the people that are walking through the doors every day. And that was this week in America.