What Is a Good Bugger?

Another question from our European Rural Exchange students that stopped me and got me thinking. What is a good bugger?

I don’t think it is the same thing as being nice. Nice can be manners. Nice can be smiling, saying the right thing, being pleasant to deal with. A good bugger can be blunt, scruffy, sarcastic and not especially polished.

I think the thing with good buggers is that they notice. They notice what is happening around them, what other people need, what is about to become someone else’s problem. And then, here's the magic, they do something about it.

A good bugger includes everyone in the conversation. It is not about politeness. It is about awareness. Have they noticed another person has entered the space? Are they looking beyond themselves, their conversation, their phone, their sales pitch? That tells me far more than whether they shook my hand properly and whether I wish to trust them with my business. The best good buggers pick up the piece of rubbish that might be blowing across the track as they are talking. 

I see the same thing in tiny moments around the farm. I’m coming down the race on the tractor and someone is standing near a gate. They see me coming, work out where I’m headed, and open it. I could have done it myself. But they were there. They noticed. They thought, I can make that easier. That is good bugger behaviour.

There’s a well-known story about former Xero Australia managing director Trent Innes and his “coffee cup test”. At the end of an interview, he would notice whether a candidate offered to take their empty cup back to the kitchen. It wasn’t really about the cup. It was about whether they noticed the small job that needed doing and assumed some invisible other person would deal with it.

Rural communities run on the energy of the good buggers.

Do you notice the gate that needs opening? The person carrying too much? The ute parked blocking the way? The neighbour having a rough week? The job that will otherwise be left for whoever comes next? Do you return borrowed gear tidy and fuelled? Do you see the animal where it should not be, the hose still running, pick up the stray fencing staple sitting on the yard, and sort all of things even though technically they’re not your problem?

A good bugger is not necessarily the person doing the biggest thing. They are often the person who notices the small thing. 

That is why I think calling it “being nice” misses the point. Nice is often about how you appear to other people. Being a good bugger is about how aware you are of the world around you and your part in it.  It is the willingness to spend a little of your own time, energy or convenience to make somebody else’s day easier. That generosity of spirit is one of the things rural communities do particularly well.

That is what strong communities are built on, thousands of tiny decisions made when nobody is keeping score.

So maybe that is my definition of a good bugger. Not necessarily the nicest person in the room. It's the person who notices.

And when they see a chance to make life a little easier for somebody else, they quietly get on with it.

LeAnne Blakelock is a Taranaki based dairy farmer and accountant, and founder of the social media platform, the Calf Chronicles.