I love when I wake up in the morning and read a Hardscrabble Farmer comment that deserves its own post. He did it again.
Anyone who wants to find work and earn enough to provide for a family can do it. Period. There is far more work to be done than there are people to do it and the base rate for even the least skill intensive of these opportunities is about triple the minimum wage.
So what’s the problem?
Expectations. Most people want a job that is exciting and glamorous and high paying with lots of benefits and great hours with a nice office and all kinds of perks with plenty of vacation and paid sick days and time off for family obligations and free lunch where you can come in late without anyone making a big deal out of it in a great city with all kinds of cool restaurants and clubs to hang out in and use the company credit card to pay for it all as long as you talk about business (wink-wink, nudge-nudge).
So with that kind of baseline for employment you can see why close to half of the available workforce would choose to sit it out on the sidelines.
I do all kinds of things off farm whenever I need money for something like taxes and insurance because I don’t consider labor beneath me and because I am able to do whatever is necessary with the right attitude. I work with millenial generation young men on a lot of tasks and the ones I know all work 60 or 70 hours a week doing a wide variety of young man, seasonal labor type work- firewood, snow removal, dock installation, house painting, furniture moving, etc. The base rate for most of these type jobs is $25 per hour. That means an ambitious young man with zero debt and no college can start out of the gate at 18 with an income in the 50K-75K range just for showing up.
I don’t have to tell you how hard it is to find these kinds of guys, why they are always in demand, why they are never mentioned in any type of government job propaganda and NEVER mentioned in the same breath as the ‘you have to get a college degree to earn any kind of living in America’ agitprop.
There are three guys I know doing exactly this right now. Their skill sets aren’t fully developed yet and they’re still young guys with limits, but what they have in spades is energy, strength and a can-do attitude. The customers are grateful for the help, completely able to pay, usually in cash and have a huge network of contacts to help spread the word about having this kind of labor available. The most ambitious of these guys has already bought himself a good second hand 4wd truck and works 6-7 days a week, 10-12 hours a day and does a shift as bartender afterwards. He’s good natured, smart as hell (though un-credentialed) and probably earns as much as a White House staffer. His overhead is nil, he’s only getting better at both customer service and in developing skills and he has a huge network of customers and people who use him on other jobs.
There isn’t a lack of work or money available, there is a gigantic problem in terms of what people think they should be doing and where they choose to live and how they go about it- or don’t.
Our society is mentally what you see in Wal-Mart physically- slothful, slovenly, ignorant, insane and perpetually hungry. That’s the employment problem in a nutshell.
I have been telling Stucky this is his problem. He is ….physically slothful ,slovenly( what ever that means,) ,ignorant , insane and perpetually hungry.Finally HSF we agree. Maybe your not psychotic after all.
HSF is old school like so many of us who are in the over 50 age group. We get money the old way “we earn it”. If HSF has a need for some extra cash, he states that he will do labor to meet his need for extra money. Clammy on the other hand would sit and play on the internet and complain about how unfair the world is while she also could be out painting houses or cleaning for some cash.
Would HSF’s son sit around and complain like Clammy? I think not, so what is the difference? It’s the OLD SCHOOL WORK ETHIC……get off your ass and find something to do.
Everything I have achieved I owe to working odd jobs.
In high school while my buddies slept in I had a 75 house paper route. I used those connections to create a grass cutting business (7 per week at $20), in the winter I would shovel the same drives (7 at $25-$30). I would also clear heavy snow off roofs, $75-$100 each. In the summer I would ride my 10 speed down to the marina’s where I would rub out and wax boats for the fat cats.
It was not above me to help tear off and re-roof a house, lay some concrete, I even hooked up with a crew installing seawalls in front of homes in danger off falling into Lake Michigan from the high lake levels in the early 70’s. With every other job I had I got a job busing tables on the weekends in my senor year, still found time to party every weekend with my buds.
They were waiting for me outside the restaurant one friday night after closing at 1:00am. After drinking with them until 5:00am I made it home, at 6:00am the cross country coach was banging on our door.
I was the top runner and that day was the state regional’s. Puked a few times, ran, got my top ten finish ribbon and went home and delivered papers. Back then I would sail, hunt, fish, canoe camping trips on the many rivers we have in Mich, ran multiple track events, ran cross country, had a girlfriend across town, lost my virginity when I was…….never mind. There was always time for work no matter what.
In the 80’s after marriage (20 and 21 years old at the time) I used to make just as much money per year working cash paying side jobs as I did working my day job as a union tradesman.
We’re talking three hours a night and a few Saturdays if a job required a bigger push to finish. My wife stayed home to raise our babies, but she helped baby sitting other kids (5-7) and we would clean offices on the weekends, all cash money.
We did this while we lived in a 800 sq foot two bedroom house. We paid that house off in six years, used the profits and cash savings to clear a lot (myself) and build a house (70% my labor) all while still working a day job and keeping my side job crew working (I hired on two helpers because of work load) as it took six months of working 7:00am to 3:30pm on my day job and 4:00pm until 11:00pm every night and working 14 hours each Saturday and Sunday building the house.
I took my birthday off as my only day off in six months of working 16 hour days.
The secret was we didn’t have to pay taxes on the cash jobs so we could actually work less hours making the same pay effectively doubling our take home per year without working double the hours. The fun part was my future father in law sat us both down at a young age (17 and 18) and taught us the beauty of a budget and paying off all debt. We had one credit card with a debt limit of $300.00 that forced us into delaying gratification until we had cash to pay for anything.
Today kids whip out a card at every transaction, effectively getting a loan to buy a pizza.
Talk about building a nice nest egg. This way of life served us well during the recessions of the 80’s, 90’s and 2000’s….fuck, recessions every decade…..
I was laid off for 9 months in 1984 because of a recession. My wife was at home with our two kids, house payment of $400 a month along with all the other bills, and unemployment of $97 per week. We never sweated a minute of it, I had built a large clientele, I still had cash work, just bid work accordingly. I did get to hunt and fish a lot more back then though, no day job fucking up my free time.
Anyway those early lessons of working extra jobs, incorporating a budget, surviving and thriving a long recession morphed into starting our own business in the late 80’s. Our business and personal fiances being debt free for 15 years now.
All because we were not afraid, or proud, or lazy, or feeling entitled, or whiny, to work any job we could find.
No student debt burden for a worthless degree helped as well. We married so young my wife was not old enough to legally drink and I was four days into being a 21 year old.
Where has the time gone?
“seasonal labor type work- firewood, snow removal, dock installation, house painting, furniture moving, etc. The base rate for most of these type jobs is $25 per hour. ”
Where? Where do they pay $25/hour for this? I live in a high per capita state (CT) and that ain’t happening here. There are so many snow removal/landscape outfits that they bid themselves to death. House painting? Maybe, if you speak Spanish and look like a Guatemalan, but you aren’t going to get paid anything near $25/hour.
Furniture moving? Hah! That’s what I did for over 30 years. $25? Try $13. I made good money in the day because I was an owner/operator and did long distance runs, like East to West coast. My workers got anywhere from $10 to &15 per hour, depending on experience, with a little bonus for any guy who really worked hard.
Lysander it has to do with supply and demand, demographics and location. If you live in a densely populated area competing with undocumented workers where there are already high rates of unemployment then the rate is going to be different than if you live in an area where it routinely snows 6 feet per season, there are more 60+ population unable to do most of the kinds of labor I mentioned and zero immigrant populations to depress wages, it is possible for an ambitious young man to earn a higher income. Don’t confuse a high per capita rate with higher wages. Firewood is currently going for $300 a cord and a two man team using a hydraulic splitter and a decent chainsaw can crank out 8 cords a day if they really hit it. You do the math. When the lake opens up every summer there are x amount of docks going in, y amount of hands willing to do that kind of job.
I only speak for my experience where I live, I don’t have all the answers for everybody in every place.
YMMV
Card 208 , so you telling me….that it was white Europeans like you that gave the world everything from the scientific method to the middle class. Card you ever stop to think you might be an amoral narcissist who got everything because of WHITE PRIVILEGE.
Just fucking with you.
I have said the same thing as HSF and Card many times.
Nothing irritates me as much as when someone says there are no jobs, or poor Little Johnny cannot find a job, or my degree is not worth anything and I cannot get a job.
Wake up people! You do not need a fucking job. What you need is too to work and go make some money.
HSf and Card both explain how to do it. It is how I used to do it. Just like Card, Iad a part time job, and then on weekends I mowed lawns, did landscaping, etc. i made more on weekends than many adults made working full time “jobs”.
Here it is again:
Pick-up trucks are invaluable for making money. Lawnmowers and gardening tools, too.
Go out and knock on doors. Knock on thousands if you have to. “Hey, lady, I am hardworking and honest and for $15 or whatever I will mow your lawn”.
Nope, people are too proud to do that – I am not going to knock on doors, they say. Ok then, try flyers.
But they need to get their ass to work. I would mow 7 yards a day in 1975 for $15 each. Cost me around $5 in gas. $100 a day clear, Saturday and Sunday.
The same system can be used, as HSF and Card say – firewood, snow cleaning, etc. and you can do it even when you have a regular “job”.
Bb – you have a truck. Don’t know if you can use it because of Fedex signage, but holy shit – Eureka! A fucking truck is a potential goldmine. At least compared to doing nothing.
Lysander – a smart kid can take advantage, er make use, of the low skilled, low wage sorts.
I would hire five or six of them on day rates, and go out and source BUG jobs when I was 18. Pay them $10 an hour, due a $1000 job in a day, pocket $500.
People just have to hustle.
The base rate for most of these type jobs is $25 per hour.
I THINK THIS “BASE RATE” AS QUOTED ABOVE IS FAR TOO HIGH ! I do not know of anyone that would / will pay an 18 or 20 year old this amount.
Skinbag – I do. If they are good enough.
Actually, I do not pay less than that personally. If they are not worth it, i get someone else.
Bullshit
BUll the fuck shit
10 to 15 tops
The damn carpenter who owns the company prices his labor at 25 an hour. And everyone else at 15. And he is making money off everyone. Firewood here is 100 a cord. 115 delivered. And 60 year olds here are still doing all their own work. And only 50 per roof. Dangerous and miserable job. Where do you live hardscrabble? Because I’m moving there.
Llpoh, whoosh! Right over peoples heads.
Lysander, hunter, skinbag, you are not thinking correctly, or listening.
“Where do they pay $25/hour for this?”
The thing is they don’t.
Nobody will just pay you $25/hour for any job, this is a problem with reality.
Get out there and exchange your time for a bid job. So you estimate you’ll clear $25/hour but you only clear $10/hour. So what?
Learn what you did wrong, increase your skill level and pretty soon you’ll be making that $25/hour, or more.
Today it’s “I want I want I want, Mine Mine Mine, Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie, or my favorite: “I need $25/hour to pay my bills” just for showing up to work….like your bills are my problem….
Lipoh , I know .I could use my truck doing all of work hauling. Like you said .Got to hustle.I guess I am getting lazy.
There is a big divide in perceptions here. HSF and llpoh aren’t talking about getting a 25 dollar an hour job, they’re talking about creating your own luck. When I first started pricing my time, I was always too low. I’m a real fast learner, and I soon realized that price was secondary to quality and promptness. The old saying, good, fast snd cheap, pick two.
I decided I would never be the cheap guy. EVER. It was a great decision. Hunter, I’m patient, let’s use your numbers. Firewood is only a buck a cord, and let’s say you and a partner can only stack 5 cords a day. 5 days a week that’s still a pace to make better than 60 grand a year each. You have to want to succeed. Llpoh’s advice about owning a truck is pricrless.
Own a truck and you own ability to make things happen. I’ve got friends constantly showing me all the amazing shit they can do on their phones. I am totally unimpressed. Phone tricks don’t make you money. I love mine. Text, email, send photos, they make my day easier for sure. But my trucks make me money. And card is totally right. Maybe you don’t kill it on day one. Get better. Make it happen. It sucks right now. I’ll let you in on a little secret. Success has never been easy.
Lots of people think they are going to have a great idea and that will change their life. Ideas aren’t worth squat. What gets you paid is ability. As in, the ability to take an idea and turn it into a profitable reality. Or do as I did. Find an industry and just do a better job, top to bottom. I have a nike sticker behind my desk for 20 years now. Just do it
And llpoh leaks another great nugget. As an employer, I am always looking for ability. Someone posted a while back how employers wanted dummies. Nonsense. Show me you can shoulder responsibility and you get paid in my world. Solve problems. Advance the ball. Learn to close. Learn to finish. Be who you say you are. Not enough out there like that.
The greatest thing about working like HSF and card say is that you’re generally too fucking busy to spend money and it piles up quick…..hence paying off a house in six months. You’re also working for yourself.
Like strfckr says…..the goal is not to go apply for a job and work for someone else. Do odd jobs, on the side, under the table, after work, before work etc. You basically look around and see what people need/want. Pressure wash houses and fences, build fences, repair fences, trim trees/shrubs. You bid the job based on how much you can do in an hour and charge accordingly. If you’re being undercut, work in a better neighborhood or the next town over.
Every job you do, you ask about friends, family and neighbors who might need any kind of work done in the near future and button up that work for yourself. Contact property management companies to go in and clear crap out of apartments and houses after evictions and foreclosures. You will not believe how much good merchandise you come across that way. You bid to clear the place out and haul it to a dump but you get to keep what you want and sell for a profit. I worked a while clearing out and repairing houses for banks. I would take all the good shit out of the house and garage, spread it on the lawn and put up some yard sale signs at nearby busy intersections and then do repairs and clean up throughout the day while selling stuff for cash. Ended up with free pressure washers that way and expanded to pressure washing anything people wanted cleaned. Got a free snowblower too. Get a rototiller and till gardens for people in the spring. The sky’s the limit!
It’s not always fun or glamorous but the money rolls in. If you’re still sitting on the couch thinking about it……you’re doing it wrong. If you’re still sitting there figuring all the ways it won’t work, you’re doing it wrong. There is plenty of time to think about it while your sweating and working that back. Trust me on that one. Your best ideas come when you find yourself doing a particularly shitty job you don’t want to be doing.
I have a forty five year old guy doing handyman work, getting my house ready to sell.
He told me he wanted $25 an hour. I told him no. That I would give him thirty five an hour and would give him one to two days a week for next few months.
But he had to earn it – hard work, hustle on time, no fucking around, no dropping me for a bigger job.
So far so good. He is happy, I am happy.
Llpoh says:
Bb – you have a truck. Don’t know if you can use it because of Fedex signage, but holy shit – Eureka! A fucking truck is a potential goldmine. At least compared to doing nothing.
I have 3 guys in the family that are independent truck drivers. One guy said other drivers call him a dinosaur because his is an old truck. Most of their jobs are commissioned overnight by cellphone. He makes runs from LA to SF frequently.
I am not interested in hiring folks for $10 or $15 per hour. I want smart, hard-working folks around me. A really good worker on $25 an hour will do way more than three fuckwits on $10 or $15.
I hire a lot of folks. Reliable steady but unspectacular employees are good for $15 or so an hour. They are bread and butter – got to have them, but pretty bland. But a real hustler – rare as hen’s teeth.
And there are a lot that do not understand their worth.
I had a job once where I got every shit job that the boss had. I asked him about it – what the fuck said I? Why do I get every shit job? Why don’t you give someone else some of them? He said he gave me the shit work because I didn’t complain and did the job in half the time.
I told him I want double. He said he couldn’t do that. I told him to jam his job up his fucking ass. In those exact words. I was 19 years old. His mouth fell open, I downed tools and turned to walk. He came after me and paid double.
It was a summer job. I was only going to be there a couple more months. He knew it. But I was worth more than double. And he got all the shit jobs done in half the time without complaint for another two months. We got along great.
It has been over twenty years since someone told me to jam my job. Unreal. I lost count by the time I as twenty how many times I told someone to jam there jobs up their asses. Why sugar coat it.
I only had one job that was too hard for me – loading tires into container trucks. I was an absolute work horse, and could work most men to the ground by the time I was 15. I got this job loading tires and made it one day. They had two or three guts been doing it years – they could handle four tires at once. Fuck me. I struggled with two. Load tires for 8 hours and see how you go. Then imagine doing it every day for 15 or 20 years. Fuck me. They were studs.
The single most impressive thing I saw re a worker was the time I had bricks delivered for a paving job I was doing. Guy showed up with couple thousand bricks. I offered to lend him a hand unloading. He said I would be in the way. He was right. The fucker unloaded the bricks by pinching together 14 at a time, and stacking them on the ground. It took him about 15 minutes to unload 2000 bricks from the truck and stack them. It took me the rest of the day to move them around back. Motherfuck, what a worker, strong as an ox, and motivated. Got paid by the thousand bricks moved. Never seen his like before or since. Built like a brick shithouse he was.
That’s a good anecdote Llpoh. I like.
But I can do you one better.
As a female 5’4′ and 120 lbs. and nearly 50, I transferred my job at UPS where I had worked for many years as an Air Driver. I ran a set route every day picking up itty bitty Next Day Air letters in a teeny tiny truck and ferrying them to the airport.
Then we decide to move and I determined to keep my job and transfer. UPS hates employee transfers and makes every effort to jack any employee who tries it. When I arrived at the new location -‘domicile’ – I had zero building seniority (union company). No better than a new hire off the street.
The new domicile put me in the loading/unloading dock. I loaded tractor trailers by hand, and unloaded them at 4 in the morning with the rest of the new hires. My co-workers were all 18 year old farm boys who could sling boxes till the cows came home. I showed up every motherfucking day and loaded/unloaded tens of thousands of pounds boxes on the load lines for two more years.
I did what I had to do to keep my job, and take care of my family.
But your story reminded me of it as we shipped a lot of tires. God I hated those things. They usually came two zip-tied together, weighed in at 70 lbs for the pair, and were covered with slippery silicone from the tire molds, they were a bitch to handle. And I had to throw them up over my head onto the fucking overhead catwalk.
I lasted two more years doing that shit. We moved overseas and I quit my job with UPS. But then in the new country what did I do for a living….? I got a job shoveling snow! I shoveled fucking snow 6 months a year for the next three years after that. I shoveled snow for a living until 2008, I was almost 56.
Then we returned to America. I got another job, as a groundskeeper. I mowed. And hedged and trimmed and hauled and weeded and mulched and shoveled an wheelbarrowed. I did that for five more years.
And now I’m 62. I’m fucking done.
Here’s the good part for our tenderoni millennials. The softer parts of the system, the ones bathhouse prizes so much, they haven’t taken the hit yet. And they will. Healthcare, education, and government are chock full of make work landing spots for credentialed and highly overrated affirmative action types. They are going to get wiped out.
I can’t count the people I’ve met who are clueless, and don’t know how worthless their masters in speech pathology is going to be as education goes digital and budgets crash. Yes, I will have the fries, thanks for asking. Llpoh, love your stories. I’ve got plenty, they would just be an echo. That’s how it’s done, folks. One of my college roommates and I pulled the old , we want double or we walk deals. He made CEO of a regional cell company. Pulls down 2-3 mill a year. We did the work of 12 people.
“A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. Whoever has ears, let them hear.”
To everyone who has echoed the original prepostion, you are the seed that has fallen on good ground.
As I have said before one of the most common refrains I hear from visitors to the farm is always this one- “It’s a lot of hard work”. It is always said with a tone that implies nothing could be more offputting than that. Hard work is anathema in the current era. Hard work, done well, with a smile is virtually unknown. Provide that, promptly, as agreed and people will form a line to get at you and gladly pay you what you ask. The responses that begin with disqualification- no one will pay that, there are too many other people doing it, etc.- are guarantees that the approach I propose are unlikely to bear fruit. Maybe they can crowd source their retirement instead.
Wow! Some awesome stories about hard work. I like a little manual labor, good exercise. I will put this up as the “shittiest” job ever. See if you can beat this. I was on US nuke subs in the 80s. I worked at a IMA facility refitting subs with sonar equipment, stuff like that.
Well anyhow, subs have septic tanks, they blow them when they are underway will compressed air, but over time you get build up and they need a “personal touch”. I got to give a septic tank the “personal touch” They put me in a hazmat suit and dropped me in a tank with a compression hose and a EAB (personal breather).
I only threw up in the mask once. Stalagmites and stalactites of shit, and the smell, which still came through the mask was unbelievable. Whenever I complain about a job, I always think back to that day 30 years ago and miraculously, the job becomes easier…
One of the things I don’t speak of much here on TBP is that I’m a ‘smithy. I’ve mentioned it once or twice the entire time I’ve been here, but never in detail…
It’s a hard won skill.
You have to be able to read and create blueprints – or at least working drawings – with measurements accurate to 0.01 of an inch and have them be absolutely right.
You have to be able to run a turret mill, surface grinder, drill press, a geared head engine lathe, etc, as well as any machinist.
You have to know metals, from copper to steel – types of steels, how to temper steel, how to draw the temper – as well as any blacksmith.
You have to be able to stick weld and gas weld as well as any welder.
You have to be intimately familiar with hand tools and capable of inventing – whole cloth – user-made tools that you need. It might only be for one specific job. But if the tool you need does not exist, or is cost prohibitive, then you have to make what you need from what you have on hand. You might only use it once, ever, but to complete a job, you must have that tool.
You have to know hardwoods – which ones are best for what you intend to do – and joinery as well as – or better than – a cabinetmaker. Along with this is checkering – hand cutting those tiny diamonds into the wood to facilitate a good grip.
(Sidestory – once, I was watching an old German guy, a woodcarver, work on a particular piece. He was carving a deer in some pastoral scene into black walnut. I remarked that what he was doing was amazing, and that the only thing I could do – at the time – was checkering.
He stopped, took off the magnifying glasses he wore over his regular glasses, and said “What you are doing is woodcarving. It is geometric woodcarving – the most difficult kind of carving. It is much harder than what I do, and I refuse to do it. Something goes wrong or I make a mistake on my deer? Then I make his leg in a slightly different position, perhaps cover my mistake with a flower or something. Who is to know it wasn’t supposed to be that way on purpose? But you, if you make a mistake, you cannot cover it up. It is wrong and the whole world can see that it is wrong. You cannot make a mistake, and that is why I refuse to do it.”
He went back to working on his deer… So much for perspective.)
There’s more, but what all this means is that one must be at least competent in a wide range of skills just so you can legitimately hang out a shingle and call yourself a ‘smithy. It’s almost an art form, with massive amounts – many, many books worth – of esoteric knowledge that others have discovered and written down and that you must have access to. Either by knowing these things directly or by knowing where to find the knowledge on your bookshelf. In this line of work, being anal retentive is an advantage – slobs and hacks don’t last very long, while those whose attention to detail borders on the obsessive usually have the best reputations…
My shop rate is $60 per hour – and that is a bargain, given the national rate is about $80 an hour… I give customers a break on the shop rate due to the economy and that most folks around here don’t have incredibly deep pockets, while still allowing myself a decent profit. Most times, I cannot quote special projects based on an hourly rate (example: constructing a replacement stock for a rifle that fits the client precisely, plus any embellishments like checkering or carving, plus finishing, takes anywhere from 150 to 400 hours. No way in hell will someone pay my hourly rate for that. So, I have to flat rate them based on the amount of work and how technical it is…), and so I end up screwing myself sometimes, but the loss is made up elsewhere…
Anyways, all this goes to whether someone genuinely wants to earn a living or not, and what they are prepared to do. Some of the stuff I do is highly enjoyable. Other things are nerve wracking (like attempting to fix a particularly rare piece that is worth multiples of thousands of dollars). Others are hot, smelly, sweaty, time consuming messes (like rust bluing barrels)… but I do it because overall, I love doing it… and it makes me money… and there will always be a call for talent.
That’s all I got… be back later.
For some reason every millenial seems to think that technology is going to get them a job or that they are going to get some kind of job that requires tech skills. If that’s not the case they want nothing to do with it. Asking them to get sweaty, dirty or do something that does not involve their iCrap and you may as well be asking them to cut off their own heads.
Millenials doing the heavy lifting of this Fourth Turning? Please! Not gonna happen. May as well load them on the cattle cars now. Just tell them they are going to be among the first to see some new/revolutionary piece of iCrap in there and they will parkour their way into that motherfucker.
Winston said:
“See if you can beat this.”
I was gonna say mop boy at the peep show but no contest…….you win.
One summerI had a job pumping out septic tanks at rest areas on an interstate. Amazing how fast they filled.
People would make fun of us for the work we did. I was being well paid., and they were assholes.
Another time I was busting concrete in the middle of the desert with a pickaxe., working with my dad. A man came out of the air conditioned building in a nice suit, and watched me swing that pick in 110 degree full sun. He stood by and watched me for a long time – at least five minutes or more. Finally he said “looks like animal work to me”, turned and walked away. I dropped the pick and went for him. My old man had, for some reason, been watching this closely, and guessed something was up. My dad managed to tackle me by the leg just before I reached the guy. The guy turned and my dad said to him you better hurry and git before he gets loose. He beat feet.
I believe it likely I would have killed that asshole if my dad had not been able to trip me and hold my leg.
All works honorable, in my opinion. No one has the right to ridicule someone who is working.
Here in Miami where there is a steady flow of legal and not so legal immigrants, I’d say the going rate is $8 cash. As the work gets harder (particularly in summer time in the oppressive humidity and sun), they’ll pay up to $15.
Nevertheless the young man are on the right path: no college debt, learning a wide variety of skills, and mostly importantly, the gumption to get up and go and time manage a job that should take say 2.5 hours into a job that only takes 2. Super valuable skills. They’ll do well.
Winston has me beat with his shitty job but mine was bad for a civilian job: I worked as a busboy and all around kitchen hand at Stone Mountain Inn and Restaurant (near Atlanta, GA) in 1977-78. The kitchen and restaurant were on the second floor. When doing kitchen duty we had to slide the leavings off the used restaurant dishes, plates and serving containers through a circular hole in the stainless steel work counter where it plopped into a 50 gallon trash can. It took 2 to 4 days for that to fill up. During which time is started to smell really nice and bubble too! 🙂
When the trash can was fill the “slop” had to be gotten rid of. When I started working there we were able to lug it (me and another guy) to the elevator, down to the basement when a farmer would come for the slop for his pigs and help him dump it into his truck. The full garbage can must have weighed 200 to 300 pounds at least (which is about right since water weighs over 8 pounds per gallon and that shit was pretty liquid after 3 or 4 days of putrefaction!)
Well, they changed the regs and no longer allowed the pig farmers to come and get the slop. another solution was found it it was a lulu:
Henceforth, all slop was to be lugged to a newly installed industrial garbage disposal in the basement, dumped on the stainless steel holding tray and hand pushed down the disposal (whose opening was only about 4 or 5 inches in diameter). This was done by one of us, frequently me and I swear I do not remember us ever wearing gloves to do it. Boy those were fun times! 🙂 Really taught us the value of a dollar and what nasty work is about and that yes, you/me too can do it. Highly recommend all should go through at least something as interesting to help have some perspective.
llpoh, I agree. I’ve never ridiculed anyone for working. More often than not I’ve just said quietly to myself : “poor bastard” and left it at that. I’ve been that poor bastard too many times.
Pick axe!!?? What the fuck? Never heard of a sledge hammer? I was a concrete finisher for twelve years doing residential tear out and replace. We did some big commercial stuff too but residential was a lot more fun. The fastest, easiest and cleanest way to break up concrete is with a couple of long, heavy duty steel pry bars and a 16-20lb. sledge hammer. Takes a little bit of know how but one you get one edge started you can break nice neat squares just the right size to pick up by hand or scoop with a Bobcat. A jack hammer makes the biggest fucking mess I’ve ever seen and is only helpful on very thick concrete. (over six inch) I used to be able to swing a big sledge all fucking day long and it was a damn sight easier than picking the pieces up although I could do that too but with a bad attitude! For a time we had an Italian guy who could swing a 16lb. sledge one handed. I’d hate to fight a guy like that!
A fucking pick axe? Fuck that!
Oh yeah, I have so far managed to avoid doing any job that involved human feces. It’s not that I’m too good for it……..I just had better options at the time or I made better options. I_S is feces free thank you!
IS, one of the hardest days work I ever did was busting up a slab in houston with an 85 pound jackhammer. Finished breaking it up, and found out it had been poured on top of another slab. Grrr. I put in new construction septic tanks for a summer. No big deal. My last day, they had a repair. They wanted me to go in with a bucket on each foot. I declined.
Yeah, jackhammers suck. They are noisy as hell plus they blow all that damned silica dust into the air so you have to wear a mask. They leave a huge mess too. Finding a second slab under the first always sux ass. Towards the end of my concrete career we got a hydro-hammer attachment for the Bobcat. I could mow through ten times the square footage in half the time with that thing. Swap to a bucket and load straight into the dump truck. With concrete work it was always better to use your head than your back.
I always felt sorry for the insulation crews and hot tar roofers. Fiberglass is miserable shit and I hate the heat! I’ve done acres of drywall but I prefer concrete work to drywall. I always joked that I needed one more head injury to become a qualified drywaller!
I got 2 junior managers going to school for business administration , ive asked both of them what kind of job will that degree get them and neither one knows !! they are paying for schooling and don’t have a friggen clue about jobs or what they are training for !! I am giving them a classical education in managing any business and it is stupefying to watch them throw away money on a paper degree that they don’t even know what it will get them in the way of a job . I despair with todays youth .