What we are going to write is not meant as a defence on our behalf regarding what happened, nor a criticism, since usually the truth is never entirely on one side, but rather a suggestion and recommendation for future Workawayers, so they can avoid finding themselves in the same uncomfortable situation that we unfortunately experienced. And we will try to be as objective as possible, despite the negative emotions that all of this caused us.
When we first arrived at Zelda’s place, everything seemed nice. During the first few days, we focused on cleaning the entire house, sometimes working 5–6 hours in one day and less on the next. We then cleaned the camper van, vacuumed the pottery studio, reorganised the food cabinet, the entire laundry room, and several other storage spaces. After that, we spent a few days renewing all the mosaics on the chess pieces, and we also helped with gardening.
Meanwhile, Zelda and her husband kindly helped us look for a van. We never asked them to do so, but they offered to drive us to the appointments, which we appreciated, as much as letting us take few stuff that were supposed to go to the opshop.
From day one, we were very transparent about the fact that we are not passionate about cooking and that we do not need anyone to cook for us—especially me (Chiara), since I am vegetarian and I am aware that this might complicate the cooking task. More than once, we said we were perfectly happy with simple food like bread, avocados, tomatoes, and bananas. Still, since they were helping us, we sometimes cooked for them (pizza, apple cake, tiramisu, pasta…).
The dog is incredibly sweet but poorly trained. I (Stefi) took him for a walk once, and he barked at other dogs, forcing me to constantly pull him back. A few days later, Zelda told us that he had actually attacked another dog and that the other owner had yelled at her because of it. On top of that, he didn’t want to walk with me—he would simply lie down and refuse to move. I tried to continue walking, but after 20 minutes, I had to give up. I have dogs in my family, and this has never happened with well-trained dogs. Zelda herself admitted that this happens quite often. For these reasons, we decided not to walk the dog anymore, as we didn’t feel safe or comfortable taking on that responsibility.
The dog also kept entering in our room and jumping onto our bed (he could open the doors by himself), and he chewed up one of my AirPods, which cost €140. I tried to be nice and didn’t ask for a replacement, though in hindsight I should probably have.
After the first week the communication problems started.
It was difficult for us (and you might encounter the same issue) to follow her directions, as she often changes her mind about what needs to be done. Therefore, we usually waited for her to start working so we could understand what she actually wanted. We would probably recommend that you don’t do the same, because in the end we were criticised even for asking “what should we do next?” after finishing a task.
She might not be around very often due to Pilates and other errands, so we suggest writing down your starting and finishing hours, as well as the tasks you have completed. Otherwise you might will be criticised for not having done certain things simply because she wasn’t there to see it (such as helping the other workawayer with cooking, loading and unloading the dishwasher, cleaning the kitchen and living room, using the vacuum cleaner, helping with groceries, etc.).
We would also like to make you aware of being cautious when accepting the help she offers. We had another unpleasant experience with her regarding the van. Long story short, we were dealing with a seller, and, although she surely wanted to help (and we really don’t doubt the purity of her intentions), she kept telling us what to do in an imposing way, crossing the fine line between giving advice and giving orders.
At one point, she even became very angry about how we were handling the situation, even though it had nothing to do with her.
In the last few days, Matt was extremely helpful. He advised us about the water leak, helped us fix it, and even let us use his tools, silicone, and alcohol. However, on the last day, while we were waiting for her to wake up and after having done the basic daily house chores, using the time to continue working on the van, she suddenly came to us very upset and started arguing out of the blue, without even giving us the chance to respond.
For that reason, we decided to leave immediately — but not before cleaning everything thoroughly. We even worked more hours than we were supposed to, bought new vacuum bags (which she said she would reimburse, but she never did), and we didn’t use the last free day we still had.
As we said, we also made mistakes, such as the cooking skill that was accidentally selected on our profile, and perhaps we did focus a bit too much on the van during the last two days. But these are all things that could have easily been solved with proper communication — which, in the end, was the biggest problem.
She tends to avoid addressing issues directly and often keeps things to herself until they build up, which can result in sudden, intense reactions when it is too late, how it happened to us.
Even though it was quite a shock for us, we don’t want to discourage you from applying to this Workaway, but just give you the tools to live the experience in the best way possible.
Said so we really hope you will have the best time at Zelda at Matthew.
