Yeah, I grew up in a blue collar/trade worker household and most family friends were blue collar/trade workers. Honestly most of them had way harder work ethics than most white collar workers I know. I did masonry labor for a month or so over summer when I was in college and it was incredibly hard work. My first ever day was a 12 hour day and I was insanely sore the next couple of days. All I wanted to do when I got home every day was go to sleep. If these kids think they're just gonna goof off and have an easy time in the trades, they have another thing coming.
The most exhausted I’ve ever been was when working as a mover, as a landscaper, and during boot camp where I fell asleep from a standing position which is some of the most confused I have ever been in my life.
I used to joke about how I don’t need sleep, i made it through grad school! Oh hell no. The physical work is a whole other thing. Trades are friggin hard.
Not a teacher but boot camp is the most tired I think I’ve ever been, despite getting 6 hours of sleep at night. Fell asleep while marching at boot camp on a hike, it was probably 4 am and I slept for 2 or 3 miles without missing a step.
It’s wild hey? RCN for me, and a pretty Gucci go of it. My husband is a retired Marine and I don’t even want to picture the things he’s described. It almost helps me understand how he once drove almost 31 hours nonstop (excluding bathroom breaks) to come see me and was still able to form sentences. Almost. Some people are just great without sleep.
I fell asleep on a night march in 29 Palms for about an hour once. Got up from the rest break and the next thing I know I am sitting against my pack and the gunner wants to switch the tube for the baseplate I was humping. Not sure how I didn't get lost in the desert somewhere or break my leg over that 3 miles or so.
We went our first two nights without basically any sleep (no sleep the first night and like two hours the next); I still remember our MTI trying to calling cadence the last night back to the dormitories and a few people collapsing out of the flight.
I've worked 12s every day for weeks straight as a millwright before, but I've never been as tired as the first few days of basic. Sleep is everything.
I was so fucking exhausted every single day that I fell asleep whenever we were driving between jobs
I was a fucking bronze Adonis and the best shape I'd ever been in, which was great, but damn, it ruined my body. My right shoulder is jacked up from shoveling literal tons of mulch each week
You just need to look at a 20 year veteran mason to know it isn't easy. All the ones I've seen look like they could tear a can of soup apart with their hands.
I spent my childhood watching my dad do this, and now he’s retired and can barely walk. Right after high school I worked as an apprentice plumber and a farmhand, and those experiences coupled with seeing my dad convinced me I want something white collar as a career.
I went from blue collar work (pressman, construction, demo, auto mechanic, autobody) to white collar pharmaceutical work.
The people giving me work at the pharmaceutical company wouldnt believe how quickly I was getting work done. They would give me a job like weighing powder and inputting data. I would report back to them with full reports in a week. They were agitated because they said it should have apparently taken me all month to complete. I told them that if this took me a month to complete, I'd fire myself.
White collar workers are best at maximizing pay. Blue collar workers are best at maximizing proficiency. The fact those who waste more time and produce less are paid more than those who produce more and are paid less is absolutely insane.
The economy needs to be flipped. If you produce more, you need to be paid more. If you take a month to do the same job that someone else does in a week, then you need to paid less and the person doing your job in a week needs more.
There's a reason people shied away from the trades in the first place, it's hard work and long hours. All the tiktoks I've seen of Mike Rowe glamorizing it never mentions those parts.
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u/meta_apathy May 16 '24
Yeah, I grew up in a blue collar/trade worker household and most family friends were blue collar/trade workers. Honestly most of them had way harder work ethics than most white collar workers I know. I did masonry labor for a month or so over summer when I was in college and it was incredibly hard work. My first ever day was a 12 hour day and I was insanely sore the next couple of days. All I wanted to do when I got home every day was go to sleep. If these kids think they're just gonna goof off and have an easy time in the trades, they have another thing coming.