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Working Man's avatar

Here is an excerpt from a post of mine “19. Working for a Living” which largely confirms your thesis. I think there is always going to be a kind of man who won’t be happy on a construction site, but he usually has grander expectations of his place in the world.

“But, in truth, the biggest difference between working in an office, as had been my lot in advertising, and working with my body on the jobsite was the experience of an unexpected freedom of mind. In a way, everything I’ve ever written about construction work is a response to my startled discovery of this fact. While my arms thrust the posthole digger into the ground to make a hole for a fence post—in this example of unremitting labor—my mind was quite free to wander where it would, all day long, everyday, without direction or supervision. No one could own or rent my thoughts. Even if I dared to speak, no one felt entitled to object except as one man does to another. The servitude of my body had limits not enjoyed by the ordinary office worker. Would everyone delight in that freedom as I had? Probably not. Certainly not the Cal student who shuddered at the prospect of digging a ditch.”

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Sam Jampetro's avatar

Just some reaction:

In the mid eighties I left my corporate management job in NY to start a business in Pittsburgh where I grew up.  I took a job at a forgings factory in the McKees Rocks bottoms to get us through while the business gained traction. I was basically a laborer: forklift driver, grinder, overhead crane operator. It was open to the elements and cold enough to freeze your overalls stiff when you left them in the locker overnight.

I remember talking with a guy who told me how the job allowed him to make the 500.00 monthly payment on his new Chevy Malibu. And in that moment realizing that, while I assumed I was in a temporary situation, for him this was his reality. 12 hours, a shot and a beer down the street and then home to start all over the next day.

A realization reinforced a few days later when the boss said to me "I've been watching your work. Keep it up and I'll promote you to the furnace". That was meant to be encouraging.

True, all this time I could find a way to let my mind wander and think, but this was imposed upon my work, rather than a happy element that was built-in to it. So, I don't know. To this day that particular work context is not my first choice. Sometimes necessary, but never desired.

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