Dirty Jobs
No, not a post about Mike Rowe, but he gets the nod for understanding it, like few others do.
I have worked at some dirty jobs. I’ve also done enough tech service that I’ve been in some pretty dirty places, and seen dirty jobs being done.
Just slaughterhouses alone, are some pretty nasty jobs. Imagine standing ankle deep in blood, while a chain drags cattle past you, while you (and dozens of others like you) flail knives around doing the same job day after day after day.
Steel manufacturing- where i cut my industrial teeth- is filthy, dangerous, and sometimes lethal. The first time I saw someone die with my own eyes was here. And the second time. And I saw a lot of other things, none of them fun or pretty. Heroin addiction. Alcoholism. The job lent itself to addictive behavior- it was such a shithole, you were anxious to find a way to escape. Some escaped better than others.
You don’t have to look far to find dirty and dangerous and horrible jobs, with people doing horrible things to keep body and soul together.
But nobody looks. People shy away from the dirty jobs, because they are unpleseant to look at, or experience. Nobody wants to stare at cows being slaughtered. Nobody wants to watch a guy snaking out a sanitary sewer.
Some years ago, I had a conversation with an online acquaintence who chided me for deer hunting. Cruel to the animals, she said. Horrible to watch. Hated to see such beautiful creatures die. I should be ashamed of myself, she said, over and over and over. All hunters were bad and all hunting should stop.
And then she emailed me a recipe for veal.
An amazing number of people are perfectly happy enjoying the work of the butcher, the ironworker, the farmer, but when confronted with the naked lunch reality of death, with the reality of filth and blood and guts, they shy away.
I don’t shy away. I have seen things that would make most people lose their lunch. I’ve seen things that made ME lose my lunch. But I never ever look away.
There are a lot of things that make it possible for us all to live our lives, day to day. A lot of those things are horrible to look upon. A lot of people would try to have them stopped if they were to look upon them, and that iws what brought us PETA, envirowhackoes, etc.
Life is dirty. Because you don’t like the dirt or the mess, is no reason to try to stop it. A lot of nasty things are necesary so that we can go about our business, a lot of shit has to be shovelled so we can make it through our day. If you dislike the dirt that comes out of Inland Steel’s smokestacks, or the blood on the floor in an abbatoir, or the practice of waterboarding… remember that they make your life possible. Without them you can’t live the sanitized for your protection life that you lead. Don’t like it? Tough. You sleep safe and warm and dry and with a full belly at night because of millions of people out there doing dirty jobs. Don’t criticise what you cannot possibly understand, and certainly don’t sit in your clean undies typing comments about how this or that or the other is wrong becuse of x. Go do those things yourself, and when you understand, come back and talk. You’ll be quieter. And more humble. And you’ll understand.
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Heh, actually the septic system backed up at my shop a few days ago, and when the septic guy showed up he wound up with a whole audience peppering him with questions.
It’s nice to see a bunch of people understand that the stuff doesn’t just disappear when you flush. :)
Indeed! We had Sue the Enormous Lesbian Plumber (it’s what it says on her business card) come to our office to get the urinal working properly again- she drug in our office manager to demonstrate the process of chiselling out the calcified mess. The ofice manager turned three shades of green and excused herself.
Great post.
We did some of that dirty, necessary work today. We branded the calves. And cut the bull calves. If you don[‘t live the life, you probably don’t understand that it is our celebration of spring.
Colonel Jessup was right. We do need them on that wall! And Tom Cruise does have a faggoty little mouth! ;)
here here. BTW what prompted this cosmic stream?
Paul, I just end up doing a lot of dirty work, is all
Dirty Jobs keep the world as we know it spinning.
Some I don’t mind at all, some I’d rather farm out… I think that’s how it is for most of us.
No bachelor I know would touch a poopy diaper with a ten-foot pole… but since becoming a Daddy, they don’t really phase me much.
Same with cleaning out a sewer, or working on a really dirty engine.
Lots of people have problems with those.
On the other hand, slaughtering is something I really don’t like. I’m planning to raise chickens, rabbits, pigs, and goats once I move out to Dad’s place; I’m also hoping to make a deal with one of the local slaughterhouses (or meat-processing businesses) to trade half my flock/herd/whatever in return for them doing the slaughtering, dressing, and packaging.
I think that’s a fair trade, we’ll see what they say.
On the other hand, maybe they’ll trade for my working on their cars… if that’s a dirty job THEY don’t like to do.
Dirty jobs are kinda subjective, but ALL OF THEM have to get done by somebody.
Ugh, tired…
Should have said, “Others have a problem with” cleaning out a sewer, or working on a really dirty engine.
I know plenty of bachelors who don’t blink at those things.
I just worked my dirtiest job to date: demolition of a 100 year old ceiling.
Previous dirty jobs: butchering pig, engine rebuilds, changing tranny + getting 90 weight all over self, diapers, bloody wounds, no problem with those.
I looked like a coal miner with all the dirt that came a Tumblin down.
Good thing the Wife was smart enough to ask me if I had a dust mask to use.
Mark
I love that one line Mike Rowe uses: “Opportunity is often missed because it shows up in dirty overalls, looking like work”.
I recall a dirty job from my youth, my Dad volunteered me to remove a toilet in a neighbors basement, the line to the sewer had clogged and every flush for the past week or more was on the basement floor. The plumber wanted what my Dad thought was an excessive amount of money to remove the toilet, so he decided “we” could do it. Got real nasty when the bolts started turning and I had to hacksaw them off, the only way I could get at them was to lie on the floor. Didn’t eat dinner that day (and it was a Sunday, our “special dinner’ day).
I learned two important lessons that day: 1) I can do a dirty job if I need to 2) I’d rather not.
One man’s trash is another man’s treasure? I spent ten years working on machinery and I would rather do that and get all kinds or dirty and greasy than just about anything else. Might have something to do with the fact that my current circumstances effectively put the kibosh on that kind of activity. Shit I can deal with, like the guy said, when the diapers were filled by my kids, it didn’t bother me a tad. Slaughtering should be a high school graduation requirement, or maybe elementary school. Waterboarding I will have to disagree with.
At the very least make your kid take 4H or FFA is the school offers it. Raising an animal, slaughtering it, cleaning it and then eating it is important in learning to respect the animals we eat. A man does what needs to be done to put food on the table, and he owns the death involved. He does it as humanely as possible, but he does it.
“Waterboarding I will have to disagree with”
And that would be because you don’t understand it. No, I don’t necesarily want to light this damned fire again, but the entire point of the post is that sometimes things you don’t like to look at have to happen for you to be safe. And waterboarding- or torturing people to get information to stop others from dying- is one of those things. Stopping waterboarding is exactly like stopping hunting, or butchering, or iron manufacture, because it offends your sensibilities. Most of the time things that offend your sensibilities are important for other people to live.
excellent post; truer words were never written…
my dirty job actually ended my marriage temporarily…getting underneath a 50-lb 1-in drive impact to loosen 2-1/2″ trunion bolts is the only way to do it, and the sugar cane juice that has collected inside, rotted, fermented, and become the foulest liquid on earth sprays and soaks clothes, hair, and everything else nearby…it’s an odor that lingers for days through multiple harsh washings, and would make anyone steer clear…
but what drove wifey away more than anything was the person i became after a few years in that sugar mill…there are some good men there, but even they become coarse and unpleasant to be around after a while…we are very much products of our environment, and the product i became in that mill was one of which my wife was not too fond.
i thank God every day that she left me so that i in turn would leave that job…i found my niche in life after that, my wife and kids came back to me, and it’s been a pretty good life.
there’s more than one definition of “dirty job” and sometimes the physical filth and unpleasantness pales next to the psychological influence.
jtc
My brother is a mold-maker/welder in a glass factory, it’s a bit like steel but it’s also not. They have a “pretty good” accident record whatever that means. From what I understand there’s about twenty different ways to do the thing they generically call “waterboarding” – it’s an open market for creativity.
“there’s more than one definition of “dirty job†and sometimes the physical filth and unpleasantness pales next to the psychological influence.”
Perfectly said, JTC.
Years ago the company I worked for “won” the Perdue chicken co business. All the processing plants, rendering plants, hatcheries, and feed mills. The machines I worked on were supposed to be in an office setting. They would roll them right up to the plastic strip doors on the line. Then they complained about reliability. Hard to get the ADF on a copier to run chicken skin without some failures. I did not like working in those plants, but I felt so bad for the hundreds that were doing the nasty, repetitive jobs there. I would rather swim in old oil than try to clean up cold chicken fat.
I guess its all relative, what some can’t stand is nothing to the next person.
I would still rather work in a chicken plant than any nursing home(had to do that today).
Sue the Enormous Lesbian Plumber? Love it. (I assume “Sue” is a noun and not a verb.)
I work for a defense contractor. I have to remind myself of how terrible our foes are to make it through years of developing ever better ways to locate and kill people.
Oddly, this is largely necessary to protect the hoplophobes.
Yep. I thought I’d heard of most of the bad jobs, until I found one that I blogged about in January:
http://tinyurl.com/6q6lja
Now that one made my stomach turn! :-o
“acquaintence who chided me for deer hunting”. I lived west of Phoenix 10 years ago. One morning I mentioned trapping 4 or 5 gophers under the berms around my yard. A co-worker asked if I turned them loose. Lordy.
I agree, FFA or 4H should be a requirement – including the slaughtering.
I’ve slaughtered animals in the past, dressed and cleaned, and prepped for the freezer. That’s how I know I don’t like it, and it’s a dirty job I’d rather trade for.
Other dirty jobs I enjoy… any work on a car is something I don’t have a problem with (although I may bitch about it, I rarely hesitate to dive in). As one decades-old friend described me, “That sumbitch ain’t happy unless he’s got grease under his fingernails”.
Butchering is just one of those dirty jobs I can do if I have to, but I’d rather not.
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