An English couple have complained about being fired from a fruit picking job in New Zealand after just one day, but their former boss tells a very different story.
Luke and May, both 23, claimed they were fired from the Wee Red Barn in Masterton, a town about 100 kilometers northeast of Wellington.
They said in a TikTok video earlier this week that they came across the strawberry farm on Facebook page dedicated to fruit picking jobs and were quickly hired by owner Dot Bissett.
However, they claimed things got off to a rocky start after their new boss spent just ‘five minutes’ explaining their new roles.
According to May, Mrs Bissett explained that they could camp and cook ‘anywhere’ in a field on the property and showed where the toilets were.
“Literally, five minutes later she came marching out and yelling at us,” she said.
The couple claimed that Mrs Bissett said they could not camp or cook on that field and that they would instead have to prepare their meals in a communal shed.
“There was dirt, mold, dust and little mice everywhere,” May said.
‘Why would you want to cook there? We also like to cook outside. We’d only been there ten minutes and people were already shouting at us.’
An English couple, Luke and May (pictured), claim they were fired from a fruit picking job in New Zealand after just one day, but their former boss tells a very different story
Luke and May said that despite getting “bad vibes” they decided to postpone it.
The next morning, they said they were only given ‘brief’ instructions on how to pick the strawberries before Mrs Bissett ‘disappeared for the day’.
The couple claimed they were punished when Mrs Bissett returned to the field at around 3pm and May ‘turned to look at her’.
“Then she starts yelling at May for turning around,” Luke.
“She told me not to turn my shoulder to look at other people and keep picking,” May added.
The couple claimed they were also reprimanded for not picking strawberries that were moldy or nibbled by wild geese on the property.
“I didn’t know that, May didn’t know that,” Luke said.
“Because she didn’t say that and we saw her for five minutes and that was it. We had lost our jobs (because) we ‘couldn’t follow simple instructions.’
Ms Bissett has since hit back with her own side of the story, slamming the couple’s claims about their experiences on her farm as ‘sad and disturbing’.
Owner Dot Bissett has hit back with her own side of the story, dismissing the couple’s claims about their experiences on her farm (pictured) as ‘sad and disturbing’
She claims that upon arrival she asked them to park with the other vans and not cook or park in the long grass due to an ongoing burn ban.
Ms Bissett also rejected claims that she had ‘disappeared’ during their first day at work and that she had shouted at or even fired the couple.
She claimed that she had been in the field that morning and instructed the workers to pick the “waste berries” from the strawberry plants.
“They were never fired, I never fired them,” Ms. Bissett told the newspaper NZ Herald.
‘I find this very sad and disturbing. I do my best to make it a nice place for all our employees.’
May and Luke filed a complaint with New Zealand’s Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), saying they posted a video about their experiences on a Facebook page for backpackers.
To support their version of events, the pair provided the NZ Herald with screenshots of Google reviews raising similar complaints about the treatment of staff of individuals posing as farm workers.
There are also some positive reviews about Wee Red Barn, which has an average rating of 3.1 out of five stars on Google.
The couple says they already have jobs on other farms.