In her first time writing for essentialARB, George Husher – better known as Georgee Husher – offers an eye-opening glimpse into the experience of working life as the only female arborist on a team of men. It’s not for the fainthearted!

“IT must be so hot working with all those rugged men,” the woman I was making polite conversation with at a wedding reception said when I told her what I did for a living.

“Mmm,” I replied neutrally, trying to mentally scrub the memory of my colleague loudly opening his bowels into a bucket on the back of the truck two weeks previously.

I regularly get asked what it’s like to work entirely with men, but I would never describe it as ‘hot’. It might be giving me low-level gender dysphoria, because most of the time when I’m wearing chainsaw trousers, I forget I’m not one. Sometimes I’m rudely reminded by a member of the public who says something hilarious like: “Did they bring you with them to make the tea?” to which I once replied: “This lot wouldn’t trust me to make them tea, they’d be too worried I’d stir it with a used tampon.” 

Making jokes is one area I do have to remember I’m a woman. It’s mildly amusing when the blokes call each other ‘babe’ or ‘sweetheart’ but when I do it, I’ll get an alarmed look as though I’ve thrown myself seductively over the top of the chipper and asked them to draw me like one of their French girls. Socialising is another tricky one, I’ve asked a lad if he wants to come for a beer after work before and seen the cogs turning in his head concerned that I might be asking him out romantically (I wasn’t), or been asked for a beer myself and merrily gone along every Friday for a year and a half before another colleague broke it to me that my drinking buddy was wondering how to make the first move after what he considered to be 60-odd dates.

WANT MORE ARB? 

‘Why do you do this for a living?!’ That’s another question I get a lot, from myself mostly, especially in the rain, early in the morning or during the depths of winter. As a part of my dissertation, I issued a questionnaire on Facebook asking arborists the same question. Four hundred and forty-three tree people responded, my favourite (and probably most accurate) answer was: ‘I wanted to work really long hours, doing hard work, for a relatively low wage.’ But the most common one – ‘I couldn’t bear the idea of being stuck in an office all day’ – I completely agree with, in fact, I don’t think I would fit into an office environment at all after 13 years on the tools.

This thought is often cemented when I tell my non-tree friends tales from work, such as a recent conversation I had that involved complaining about an uncomfortable staff meeting I was subjected to by my boss because ‘Climber A’ had spent months poking ‘Climber B’ in the bum hole with a rake handle every time he bent over. The problem was (apart from the obvious) that Climber B happened to have a very nasty haemorrhoid and being poked in the bum hole with a rake handle risked rupturing it. Our boss decided to take Climber A and myself aside on site one day to have a little chat about this situation.

After steeling himself to say what needed to be said, our employer took a deep breath and for some reason focused entirely on me to give his speech. Two words into it, Climber A put his ear defenders down and suddenly found himself a tree to disappear into, leaving me to receive the toolbox talk from hell about the ins and outs of how serious an oversize bum-grape could be and why we should no longer poke each other in the bum holes with rake handles when we bent over. I finished my story with an air of outrage and my non-tree friend replied: “Are you serious?”

“I know, right? It had nothing to do with me and I had to listen to the whole thing, I don’t think he paused for breath once!” 

Life is never dull in tree care Life is never dull in tree care (Image: Getty Images)

“No, George,” she said, still in shock. “I mean about the part where somebody was poking somebody else in the bum hole every time they bent over!”

“Well, yes but you’re focusing on the wrong thing here ...” 

“I really don’t think I am! If I went around my workplace assaulting my coworkers with an office stapler every time they bent over to get something out of the printer, my HR would call me in immediately and ask if I’d rather be fired or sectioned, and they’d probably do both!”

What can I say? Tree work certainly isn’t for the fainthearted, but most of us probably aren’t fit for anything else.