Say Hi to Your Barista: How Small Talk Landed Me a Job in Antarctica
BY DAISY HODGSON
How small conversations can quietly change the direction of your career.
13 JAN - 2026
Consider this a case for small talk. The kind that feels pointless until it suddenly isn’t.
I love a chat, a yap, a yarn, with myself or with others.
A weird thing about me (and the lawyers may love or hate this) is that I like to document conversations I’ve had. My diary entries all have titles. Over time, it’s become a kind of rolodex of interactions, moments or comments that tickled my brain in one way or another.
So when Chatty Chums asked me, “When did you start thinking about leaving your corporate job for Antarctica?” I went into the archive to figure it out.
For context, the titles in my digital diary look a bit like this:
May 3rd 2024 – “Why is Adam Brody so hot”
May 15th 2024 – “We should Lime bike to hot yoga”
June 7th 2024 – “Playing puff puff pass the banana”
June 11th 2024 – “My mum is so sweet I need to be successful”
June 12th 2024 – “I keep dreaming of kumquats”
June 14th 2024 – “I didn’t see you as an office worker”
There it was. June 14th, 2024.
That last one was a comment a barista made after I’d struck up small talk while waiting for my coffee. There’s something about comments on first impressions that can feel like a douse of cold water.
Maybe if I’d been in a different headspace, I would have brushed it off. What does this Saeco slinger know about me anyway? But it rattled me, because I’d secretly drafted a resignation letter and kept changing the end date.
At the time, I had an interesting job at a research and development company for robotics. My role was to find avenues of funding. The work was engaging, and so were the people. But it was also a post-COVID grab for job security, taken without much thought about what else I actually wanted to do.
“I’m going to Antarctica damn it” — a diary entry from August 17th, 2024.
So why Antarctica? Like the barista comment, that idea was sparked by another conversation, this time with a lecturer in my final year of university.
They said, “If you ever have the chance to go to Antarctica, you should. It will change your life forever.”
Like a lifeboat, that sentence floated back to me after a particularly rough day at work.
I’d hidden in the office’s “pooing toilet” (you know the one), overwhelmed by the urge to cry. I wanted to change my life. Uninspired by van life or hostelling around Europe, I was looking for that random, different thing you do in your twenties.
A few months later, I handed in the letter.
But how do you find work in Antarctica? I had zero connections to the end of the world and no relevant experience I could point to. Google led me to people who worked there, but very little about how they got there.
Most had spent years working toward it, through polar research or the trades.
I didn’t feel like starting over as a diesel mechanic, and I didn’t have a burning research question compelling enough to justify a PhD on Adélie penguins. I also wasn’t sure whether it was Antarctica itself that appealed to me, or simply the idea of doing something completely different. I wanted a try-before-you-buy version of a big life change.
So I needed to find another way.
Conversations had landed me here, so I decided conversations would take me the rest of the way.
I started deliberately inviting people to help me problem-solve. Within six months, I landed a role in an Antarctic program. Here's how I did it.
A guide to small-talking your way to your dream
Start small. Go off script.
Seriously.
Make eye contact and smile at the fuel cashier. Say something other than “good, thanks, and you?”
The goal isn’t to be weird or overshare.
Instead, give people a prompt that invites a thoughtful response rather than a polite one. When I started, I didn’t launch into “I want to work in Antarctica, help.” I stayed well away from that, opening with something innocuous to get comfortable starting small talk.
When in doubt, you can always use the weather.
Try: “My clothes are staying so damp. I’ve been reading reviews for heat pump dryers for seven hours. What’s your dryer situation like?”
Practice saying what you want (and what comes next).
Film yourself saying it out loud.
Your dream: “I want to conquer my fear of horses, but I don’t know any horses.”
Likely follow-up: “If you’re never around horses, why is it important to you to conquer that fear?”
Conversations are easy to stumble through, so build a simple story arc: who you are, where you want to go, and what you’re asking for. Keep it short. I practised my pitch out loud in the car until I could explain it in under two minutes, including why I wanted to do it and what kind of help I needed.
This took practice. Some early conversations were rough. When asked, “Why would you want to do that?” my answer was sometimes just, “Because it’s cool.” Which is fine, but it’s also a conversation-ender.
The worst conversations happened when I gave no context and launched straight into my goal, as if the other person had been following my story from the beginning.
Clarity in conversation is kindness. The best conversations were the ones where I articulated a small part of my goal and asked for specific advice.
People want to help people with plans. They don’t want to help people who are just complaining about their jobs.
Implement "The holiday" you
You know that version of yourself when you go on holiday, who seems to love everybody and finds herself talking to the tuk-tuk driver and then getting invited back to their family home for sweet tea? Channel her.
Holiday-You is curious, open, and assumes the best in people. She asks questions like "where can I find the best satay in town?" and actually listens to the answer.
Break your routine, and you'll break out of routine conversations.The best way to do this is to take a well-worn path in your neighbourhood and turn left where you usually turn right.
Steal from improv with the "yes and"
Go with the flow, and start saying yes, with follow-up questions.
When someone mentions they know a person who once drove buses for a mining company, I don’t immediately think, but that’s not Antarctica. I think, that’s experience in remote environments, and suddenly it’s relevant.
Say yes to exploring tangential connections. Yes to coffee meetups. Yes to slightly weird networking events. Yes to conversations that might lead absolutely nowhere.
The key is staying curious about where threads might take you. Don’t dismiss opportunities just because they don’t look exactly like your end goal.
That said, know your boundaries. Say yes to exploration, and no to anything that makes you uncomfortable or unsafe.
The art of the cold call
I sent emails. I made calls. I slid into DMs. Shamelessly, I asked for introductions, reached out to people already doing the work I wanted to do, and asked one simple question: how did you do it?
Think of it like the villain monologue trope, that moment at the end of every movie where the bad guy explains exactly how the plan came together. People genuinely love telling you how they succeeded, and they’re often flattered to be treated as the expert in their own story.
Ask for specifics. If you were to do it again, what would you skip? What would you do differently, knowing what you know now?
Don’t be the “nice-guy”
It’s obvious. People can sense when you’re being nice because you want something from them. It’s a turn off, and it’s not cool. Be sincere in your interactions, and genuinely curious about people. Don’t just engage with people because you think they can help you.
Don't assume they can't help
At a party, an acrobat told me rope technicians were ageing out of circus work and the industry was subsidising training for replacements. I was interested in getting rope experience for mountain climbing but there aren’t many mountains near my home in Australia.
I never even considered the urban mountains.
Someone might have a completely unrelated experience that sparks a new approach you hadn't thought of. The person next to you might not have your dream job, but they might know someone, who knows someone, who does.
Say thank you and shout out your helpers
There’s nothing lovelier than feeling like you helped someone and that your insight mattered. Follow up with people and let them know how their advice played out. Tag them in posts about your progress, or simply send a message that says, remember when we talked about seahorses? I’m now studying the mating cycle of the leafy sea dragon.
People remember being appreciated, and they’re far more likely to think of you when the next opportunity comes up. Pay it forward when you can.
Show your work. Invite people in.
Find a way to start conversations with as many people as possible. I made a public Instagram, Wildly OffTrack, as something I could point to and say: this is what I’m trying to do.
If you’re looking for a framework, I highly recommend Ali Abdaal’s book Show Your Work. It’s a great starting point for sharing your process without feeling cringe.
Having a public account gave me credibility, accountability, and a clearer sense of what I actually wanted. It also made it easier to reach out to people who might know how to help.
I ended up landing my current role because an old manager followed my Instagram and became an extra set of eyes and ears for opportunities.
So where did chatting lead me?
Within six months, I landed a role with Securing Antarctica’s Environmental Future (SAEF) at Monash University, supporting world-class scientists as they monitor environmental change at the end of the earth.
On paper, it’s the same job I’d done before: securing funding. In practice, it’s an entirely different universe. On any given day, I might talk to glaciologists, politicians, technicians or tourism operators. I share an office with someone who trains people to work in Antarctica. I email Antarctic programs and stations around the world. I talked my way into rooms full of people smarter than me, with the information I needed to move forward.
I don’t know if Antarctica is my final answer yet. But I do know that conversations will keep getting me closer.
So speak up. Your dream job might be waiting in line behind you at the coffee shop.
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