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Physical Labour... Who here has been paid to do it?

2K views 49 replies 26 participants last post by  BigDL 
#1 ·
I have.... many, many times and many, many unpaid times.... too many to count... well at least if I did try to count I am almost 100% sure I would be forgetting something... ;)

Let's hear the stories... the good... the bad... and the ugly....
 
#5 ·
How much physical labour is there being a desk jockey? ;)

Myself, I'm building/finishing my basement, built a shed and landscaped my back yard last summer, put cupboards up in my garage, the list doesn't stop. On top of that, for my "9-5" I'm a Red Seal Construction and Maintenance Electrician.
 
#3 ·
Was part of a wrecking crew when they were gutting a dorm at Acadia U. Hardest three weeks of my life.

Started at 6:30am, went to 5pm. On our hands and knees prying up carpet with our hands, then butter knives, then finally some of us wee given hammers.

Tearing down double-thick drywall, so much dust and 40 years of randomness.
 
#4 · (Edited)
Did a lot of demolition between academic gigs when starting out. Gutted a few significant landmarks in eastern Ontario.

Nastiest gig was removing pigeon crap from the Canal museum building in Smith Falls. Pigeons are the most disgusting creatures on the planet.

Spent 2 weeks at in in the height of summer. Full haz-mat gear. Temperatures over 140F every day inside the roof. You'd go in with dry socks and come out with boots full of sweat to above the ankle after just an hour - you'd literally pour it out. After diggings all (huge dump truck full) that sh*t out and vacuuming, we got to go back and soak everything with bleach... !!!!! XX)

Paid well tho'....... :D

Should note that I went back to visit the museum after it opened. Guess what was flying around the unoccupied space in the building.......

As well, my house was built in 1815 so physical labour occupies most of my "spare" time.....
 
#8 ·
1. delivered newspapers (via my bicycle) in my early-teens - that was certainly physical.
2. worked summers in a (fruit & veggie) cannery (to put myself through my early university days) - stacking boxes of cans off a labeller, catching and weighing fresh berries (for jams and the like), catching green beans in boxes, peas in trays, and etc. Go, go, and keep going ... for hours on end!!!
3. worked at sea (Gulf of Alaska) for 9-months of a research trawl survey -- long hours (dawn to dusk), in the fall/winter/spring weather of the open ocean.
4. measuring halibut (two summers, at a seaport in SE Alaska) - long hours, big fish, lousy weather.
But 3 and 4 were great experiences, and they seeded my way into graduate school!!

Heh, fond memories!! Hard work at times, but it paved the way to what I wanted, and worked for me at the time.
 
#9 ·
Starting at 13 years old scrubbing floors and janitorial work for minimum wage of a buck ten per hour ($1.10)

Demolition work in my teens.

Freight Handling and pick up and delivery truck driving in my 20 and thirties. Labouring work into my mid thirties.

In my fifties driving a truck delivering fuel oil and then M/T caskets. Working for a dairy building pallets of food stuffs, loading and unloading trucks.

Currently, I am working for a trucking company loading and unloading trailers and containers, now in my late fifties.
 
#11 ·
Wow, where to begin..

Worked construction in early 70's as a young'n and did plenty of demo work, including old oil boilers enclosed with what I think was asbestos. We chipped it off before we broke up the cast iron. Can any old timers confirm what that stuff was?

Did geophysics for a mining company in the bush. Not unusual to wade chest deep in swamp water for a long time.

Spent many a time handbombing my loads even when I owned my own rig. From fifty pound boxes of apples to frozen sea food and just about anything else that someone was too cheap to put on pallets. Just part of the trucking game, I suppose. Best was loading green coffee in the Brooklyn piers weighing 150 Lbs per bag. Usually me and a helper would load 250 bags for a total of 37,500 lbs. There were times I had to load a 40' ocean container that I just pulled out of Red Hook Marine terminal empty and it was like 140 degrees inside.

I still have the hooks I used to load the coffee bags with and this was more than 22 years ago. So for your viewing pleasure, I took the following iPhone shot:
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#14 ·
Given the time period there is a good chance it was asbestos. My old man was a plumber and I used to help him out on jobs as a kid in the 70's and we routinely serviced boilers with asbestos insulation.

Other than that I did plastering for the better part of 20 years before going back to college for a 3rd and hopefully final career change.
Thanks, that's what I figured...asbestos. No masks, no nothing...just chip it off, breathe in the dust, handle it with your bare hands and carry on. Ah the good old days...LOL
 
#13 ·
That is of course why it is called working for a living.

Physical job aspects ranged from extremely sedentary (Draftsman) to very active (Construction).

If I were to un-retire it would almost certainly involve some physical activity.

Must say the more sedentary the job the less I enjoyed it.
 
#15 ·
Planted trees one summer. Not arduous, but hard on the back and lots of flies.

Worked in the grinder room of a paper mill. The job consisted of keeping four 4 x 4 x 16' holes filled with 4' long logs. I moved 36 cords one night.

I worked one summer driving logs on the river. That job was actually historic as it was the last year log drives were allowed on the river.

I had one session of hammering out the floor of and arena for the installation of a new boiler. I ran a 90 lb jack hammer for a week. I am not that big. It was the quickest 10 lbs I ever lost.

Things not done for money? reonovated one house, built another and did silly things like lay hardwood, rewiring, decks etc.
 
#16 · (Edited)
KPS they used to use an asbestos laden plaster or cement on boilers. Sometimes it appeared to be just fibers in the mix. I saw other ones where the build up was like a cast with a plaster into a gausse type material. So chances are it was asbestos. Mind you, at that time it might also have been in all sorts of other things such as your brakes and in and around the hot pars of appliances.
 
#25 ·
Exactly what it was, a plaster and lots of it. Created lots of dust when we were breaking it apart.
 
#17 ·
Define paid? I completely renovated my house myself and then added a 300 sq ft addition and then sold the house for a significant profit... Sweat equity!
 
#24 ·
The hooks must go in the corners (the customer will look for holes, rips, stains, etc.) The burlap is thicker where the stitching is. You and the helper you're loading with must develop a commonality, a rhythm when grabbing and tossing those 150lb bags, otherwise it just "don't work". I forget the tie and tier for the bags now..I think they were only 4 high when stacked on the floor of the trailer.
 
#26 ·
Interesting thread.

In my teens and twenties, I paid for gas and college by working at a sewage treatment plant (emptying the holding tank and cleaning manhole floats were the worst jobs), being a mover (who knew how many people own pianos?), installing solar heating panels on roofs, tying grape plants, and delivering photocopiers.
 
#32 ·
Never dug ditches, but I had a variety of after-school and summer jobs including working as a cook in a fast-food place (before McDonalds brought the production line to fast food), and working on a production line. Both hard work and I believe I made $2.10 as a cook (once I got promoted to 'assistant manager trainee', which meant the manager trusted me to lock up at the end of the day so he could go home early).

The production line work was hard work, and long hours - started the shift at 6:00 am (before the buses were running to that part of town, so I'd take the bus as far as I could and then walk the last 2 miles, uphill, to work). The shift ended when the production run was done. If it was a good day, I'd be done by 3:30 pm. If there were issues with the production equipment, we could be there until 10 pm. Non-union shop, but the pay was good, and depending on who was lead-hand for the overtime sometimes they'd bring in Mr. Sub sandwiches when we worked into the evening. I was in the best shape of my life at the end of that summer, and had buckets of money as I didn't have the energy to actually go out and spend it.

I still get to do some physical labour (climbing around construction sites), but mostly it's standing around outside looking down dark holes, waiting for the electrician. Other people handle the shovels though. (I'm the person in the hardhat, steeltoes and vis-vest with the clipboard.)
 
#33 ·
I started with working for contractors in my area, I lived in a rural area so that's pretty much the source of most summer and first jobs. It was first a helper for a mason, hauling bricks up the side of scaffoldings and mixing mortar for the chimney bricklayers, then on to digging out basements (on hands and knees to a conveyor), building additions etc. I learned what backbreaking work was. Helped later when I gutted my own house and rebuilt a lot of it. Later, a touring drummer, hauling your own gear up many flights of stairs, and pounding like a nincompoop for minimum 2 hours a night, that was more physical work then even I had bargained for. Sometimes, if you're on a radio tour, you do that 3 times a day, on about 2 hours sleep for months. Kept me relatively fit even at nearly 50 now. I look around at friends who are at least 100 pounds over, and am glad now I did all that.
 
#34 ·
When I was teaching grade six in Waycross, Georgia, a tornado nearly took our school away one afternoon (it landed about half a mile away). The school board could not afford a tornado shelter, so the PTA got together to dig a huge culvert and place into the ditch a corrugated steel tube that could hold all of the children and teachers at the school. I helped out with the digging .......... in 97F temps with 90% humidity .......... and thought I was going to die.

I also helped out a student (along with about 20 in our class) to help pick tobacco leaves and cotton. This boy's family, a tenant farmer, was going to lose his little farm if he could not get in the crop. I spent four hours out in the hot sun, along with my students and a few parents, but we got in the crop and he saved his farm. Again, thought I was going to die.

I think of these two experiences each time I shovel snow for a couple of hours after a big snowstorm here in St.John's. I find any sort of physical labor good for the body, and helpful when trying to think.
 
#35 ·
Thanks for the reminder, groovetube. For four years, I was a working musician, too. In the 80s, keyboard players were judged by the size of their racks, and I had two full ones, including a Yamaha CP-70, which came in two sections, 165 and 150 pounds respectively. A friend built me a plywood case big enough to hold my synths, cords, pedals, and drum machines. It came in two halves, each of which doubled as a riser for one of my racks. Great concept and design, until we had to lug it in and out every week. Ack!
 
#37 ·
I started with working for contractors in my area, I lived in a rural area so that's pretty much the source of most summer and first jobs. It was first a helper for a mason, hauling bricks up the side of scaffoldings and mixing mortar for the chimney bricklayers, then on to digging out basements (on hands and knees to a conveyor), building additions etc. I learned what backbreaking work was. Helped later when I gutted my own house and rebuilt a lot of it. Later, a touring drummer, hauling your own gear up many flights of stairs, and pounding like a nincompoop for minimum 2 hours a night, that was more physical work then even I had bargained for. Sometimes, if you're on a radio tour, you do that 3 times a day, on about 2 hours sleep for months. Kept me relatively fit even at nearly 50 now. I look around at friends who are at least 100 pounds over, and am glad now I did all that.
I have had similar experiences with 8 years of on location video production experience in my past, but I didn't mention them because strictly speaking I don't think of it as a physical labour job although there was much physical labour involved.

I would often have several shoots a day each involving carrying over one hundred fifty pounds of gear to and from my car to the location (which could sometimes be several blocks away depending on parking availability) setting it up , tearing it down and doing it all over again a couple more times. Not to mention sometimes having an ENG camera on my shoulder for hours at a time...

It was extremely physically demanding work but I was in great shape back then and could handle it despite often times being in very hot weather wearing a jacket and tie... very sweaty... but I looked good. Good deodorant was a must to not be musty/musky smelling. ;)
 
#36 · (Edited)
Oh where to begin?

My father was a cop who mostly worked nights, so my days growing up were spent with my Granddad who was a gardener for the city we lived in. He looked after two parks, one cemetery and three schools. From the time I was old enough to help, I spent my weekends and summers as his helper. We loaded and unloaded his truck at each location, lugging hoses, garden tools, wheelbarrows, bedding plants, bags of fertilizer etc. as we used them at each location. Flower beds to be dug, lawns to be cut with a push mower. First real physical labour I did which began about the time I was 10 and continued uninterrupted until I was 18 and he finally retired. He had to as I took a job at the newspaper and he was too old to do it without me.

Working in the production department of the newspaper was a tough grind. Things were still letterpress in those days and with lead being the main raw material, lifting it daily had me in the best physical condition of my life. Not to mention unloading and stacking one ton rolls of newsprint without the benefit of a fork lift each month and bundling and tying, then stacking 9,000 newspapers twice weekly.

Also helped my father build a cabin at the lake when I was between 14 and 18. Felled huge Tamaracks to use as the foundation, erected the frame and hammered fully half the nails in a 20 x 24 foot building. Everything hauled in and cut by hand without benefit of any power tools. My job was the rafters as dad didn't like heights.

Then there were the three homes with unfinished basements that had completely finished basements when I sold them. I did everything myself with the help of my wife. Framing, insulation, wiring, heating ducts, flooring, plumbing, drywalling, ceiling stipple, trim, carpet, etc, etc. Also building fenced yards at each location, along with outdoor storage sheds, decks, patios and even one garage.

And the cars. I had a collection of vehicles and rebuilt most of them from the ground up. I would buy, rebuild and sell one to get another. Then make enough to get two more and wound up with four at one time. Still have one. Rebuilt motors, transmissions and rear ends. Brake jobs, tune-ups, broken springs and axels repaired. Body work and prep for painting as well.

Owned a third interest in a fly in fishing lodge in the early 80s and my two partners and I spent hundreds of hours building log guest cabins using raw materials available on site. An addition to the main lodge, a generator outbuilding, boat houses and docks. Plane load after plane load unloaded and lugged from the dock up the hill to the camp. Cut an air strip out of the bush with chain saws and a stump puller to avoid more costly float plane service for clients. That was one of the toughest challenges and took two complete summers with work crews of a dozen or more friends helping. They got free fishing privileges for their assistance.

Nearly forgot my after school/Saturday job pumping gas at the local Chrysler dealership. Clean all windows, check the air pressure in all tires including the spare, check the coolant level and the oil. When the pumps weren't busy, fix flat tires and detail trade-ins before they hit the used car lot. Used to repaint all the rubber with a solution of 90% gas and 10% black paint to make stuff shine like new, but dry quick. Same thing under the hood and in the trunk. Got high on those gas fumes many times. No smoking anywhere near a detailing car for that reason. Full wax job on each one too. I did hundreds over the years.

Yep, I've had a callous or two in my day.
 
#39 ·
...Working in the production department of the newspaper was a tough grind. Things were still letterpress in those days and with lead being the main raw material, lifting it daily had me in the best physical condition of my life. Not to mention unloading and stacking one ton rolls of newsprint without the benefit of a fork lift each month and bundling and tying, then stacking 9,000 newspapers twice weekly....
Certainly you couldn't do this by yourself... how was it done?

But this story made me remember another physical labour job I had at Carleton University as the Charlatan's (the University newspaper) distribution manager.

Basically I was a glorified newspaper boy, delivering hundreds of newspaper bundles around campus (although I also sent out the mailed copies and managed the distribution list as well).
 
#42 ·
Don't have time to check my gig list, but off the top of my addled head, we played New York, New York (nicknamed "Narc Narc"), and that was a long, narrow stairway. We played the Old Forge in the basement of the Strathcona--the only gig where they had a custom-made cage for the stage (fortunately, we didn't need it). And CFB Esquimalt, which was very nice.

Sorry for the potential derailment.
 
#45 ·
new york new york as in the city? I don;t recall any bad loadins, but I do recall many a show down there where there were 7 bands, and every drummer HAD to use their own kit so it was a real crapshow. Eesh.

Canada, well, they like their crazy loadins. Make us work eh?Though I did like the IATSE shows where I wasn't allowed to so much twist the wingnut on my cymbal stand for fear of some union infraction :)

derailment yeah, sorry :)
 
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