The War on Work

I've been watching Dirty Jobs lately, and if you've never seen it, you should. It's really entertaining, and (arguably) educational. I'd never seen it myself until just a couple of months ago, when I saw the host speaking on TEDtalks and was intrigued. (I only have basic cable, so a lot of things things get past me.) I liked what he had to say, and the premise seemed interesting enough, so I checked it out.

As I've implied, I do find the show incredibly entertaining, and I'd forgotten about what Mike had talked about at TED until just a couple of days ago, when I saw the episode entitled, "Safety Third". It's actually kind of profound, and I found myself nodding all the way through, because I've been around long enough to have done some dirty jobs, and I totally got what he was saying.

My point (and I do have one) is that I agree with what he said in that talk - that we in North America have "declared war on work". A good many of us look down on blue collar workers - or at the very least, we sure don't want to be them, and we probably don't want our children to be them either (stay in school, kids!)

This likely seems odd coming from a programmer who hasn't handled a shovel at work for over 11 years, but do remember that I did once handle a shovel at work, and many other "real" tools besides. Anyhow, the thing that struck me about the talk was that he claimed that all the people he met doing some of the most horrible jobs you can imagine, were among the happiest he's ever met. They whistle while they work.

Do you?

Me neither, or at least not as much as you'd think when you consider the amount of effort we put into getting the jobs we have now. Honestly, in my previous life as a blue-collar type, I was generally happiest when I was actually doing the work. I may not have worked in a sewer or a steel mill, but I've cleaned my fair share of nasty bathrooms, and I've had much worse days fighting with finicky server hardware.

It's really dealing with other people - largely the public, but they ain't the only problem - that drove me into this industry (and I use the term "industry" loosely), because I knew eventually I'd have a job where my exposure to people who piss me off or stress me out would be minimized. It really isn't because I didn't want to wield a shovel anymore, I just got fed up with taking abuse from those who felt I should wield it differently.

I have no idea why this has been getting under my skin, but there it is.