• 7 Posts
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Joined 4 months ago
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Cake day: December 4th, 2024

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  • Insulation fucking sucks. If your do a lot of work with it though then it’s worth it to just fork over the dough for a proper full face respirator. That makes things so much more comfortable. Even with full gear though you’ll still wind up itching somewhere.

    As far as the trades go though, honestly switching to a blue collar job is the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done. I went from IT to being a refrigeration mechanic and I love it. I might not be saving lives all that often but it is nice to be able to know that I am helping real people. Like a call I had recently getting a fridge fixed in time for a small town bar to still have cold beer for St. Pattys day. I spent hours laying on a filthy bar floor with an acetylene torch swapping out a compressor old enough to have seen the collapse of the soviet union. But when I got that thing going again the cheer from the farmers sitting at the bar made my day. Sure I didn’t change any lives, but I left knowing I made people happy.

    Of course the bigger emergency jobs can be very high stress. If I get an emergency 1AM callout with a down grocery store rack system and a million dollars of produce spoiling, then I’m definitely sweating a bit. But even then, it’s a good stress. It’s a stress that pushes me into action and my brain into gear. There’s no dread in it. There’s only the knowledge that people are relying on me to solve the problem and there is no one else comming to the rescue. It’s a chance to prove that you can fix anything no matter how creative you need to get with that fix.

    The job is often backbreaking. The job is often filthy. The job is often even dangerous. Most days I come home covered in various substances with new scratches, bruises, and/or burns in various locations only to sit down and just ache for a while. But most days I also go to bed happy and content.


  • The pay does do it for some jobs. I was up on a rooftop in -10F wind at 1AM for several hours a month ago fixing a furnace. But I was being paid $50 per hour (in a very low COL area) to do it so I was happy to do it and would be hapy to do it again. I regualrly have to crawl around in the nastiest places in places like meat cutting plants, work in -20F freezers, or on rooftops in scorching heat, but I get paid well to do it and my employer treats me well so I can say I actually love my job. People will not only put up with some miserable conditions if you pay them enough and treat them well but they will often even enjoy it.

    The problem is farm work is miserable while still paying like shit and, to top it all off, usually the ones in charge are entitled assholes like the one in the article.













  • You still can. My dad bought a 2010 F150 for $400 a couple years ago. Sure it used to be a salt truck and therefore had more rust than metal left on its body. Sure it had 4 bald flat tires on it. Sure you have to disconnect the battery every time you park it or it dies. Sure the CD player ocasionally makes grinding noises and starts smelling like smoke every once in a while until you whack the dash hard enough to make it stop. Sure it has no shocks left whatsoever and it feels like you’re driving a trampoline. But who cares about minor things like all that?