I often get the sense that I’m in the only one here doing manual labor but I’m sure there are others.
Identify yourselves.
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Shipwright welder. I crawl all throughout the bowels of Navy and civilian ships with my gear in tow. I build new areas, cut out old areas, and perform repairs on hulls and pipes.
I love welding. One of my favourite things to do in my previous job. I’m highly skilled at oxy-acetylene welding steel pipes in really tight and difficult places but my favourite one was TiG welding stainless steel with automatic and ventilated mask while listening to podcasts. Really meditative just being in your own bubble staring at the bright spot of molten metal.
I’m shit at welding for someone who’s generally handy in just about every other area. If you want two pieces of metal that barely stick together, with wires sticking out all across the seam, then I’m your guy!
Do you get covered from head to toe with grease and grime? Does it pay well? I have a friend who’s about ready to wrap up his underwater welding classes, and supposedly he’ll make some big bucks after he graduates.
My boss just had me change two coworkers’ passwords so they wouldn’t be able to log back in.
I keep washing and washing, but the blood won’t come off.
Flooring and Flooring Accesories
I’ll go first.
Self-employed general contractor / plumber
Thank you for your service
Tallship sailor/rigger
I used to be a programmer, but I got sick of the whole corporate scene. Now I build and maintain houses - and my hands are dirty a good amount of the time!
Damn that’s a crazy transition. How do you like it?
Well, it’s been about twenty years and I haven’t gone back to the cubicle farm!
Facility maintenance. We grease motors, change belts, tighten bolts. One of the fuel pumps on our generator has a leak, so that’s a fun bit of dirty hands.
My approach to maintenance also involves a lot of cleaning, because I believe clean equipment runs better over time. So cleaning off fan blades, insides of electrical cabinets, sumps, etc. We also fix sinks and toilets.
I work in disability support so I may use various creams while massaging, I get messy while helping people with washing and toileting, and I feed people which can get messy. I also help people with their yards, cleaning their house, washing their pets, whatever they need.
Software engineer. Sometimes I spill coffee, sometimes it’s chocolate or chips crumbs.
It’s honest, hard work, but someone has to do it.
As a software dev, I have spilt coffee on myself a number of times. People just don’t understand what a hard working environment it is. 😞
I work for an ISP in the southeast USA as a field technician and it’s dirty work sometimes. Fixing rodent damage to fiber connection boxes for businesses, placing temporary cables when underground lines get cut, working in dusty equipment closets, etc.
It’s not bad or hard work most days.
I do occasional vehicle maintenance, like replacing brakes, starters, alternators, water pumps, radiators, etc.
Last one I did the other week was replace an old rotted leaky fuel line. Fun fun…
Diesel mechanic, the black never washes off!!
Hands themselves stay clean, but through my gloves/gown, I’m regularly elbow-deep into blood, guts, and poop.
Surgical technologist. It gets pretty nasty.
Pay is kinda shit though, so I’m trying to switch over to nursing.
Damn, I wouldn’t expect the words “surgical” and “shit pay” to go together, especially when a basic surgery gets billed at $40,000+. From what you described your day at work to involve, you deserve all the money! Especially since you’re helping people.
We’re ultimately ‘just a tech’. We make enough to pay the bills, but not enough to make things like the check engine light not-terrifying.
It’s a good foot-in-the-door job, especially if your path of entry is like mine (enlisted USAF, they just told me “You’re going to be a surgical tech!” and I was like “Cool! …what the fuck is a surgical tech?” and they covered all my training for it).
I generally discourage people from actually paying to go through a surgical tech school, cuz if you can afford that, then you can afford to go to nursing school, and nurses make about twice what we do.
Super cool experience, but not a good long-term career choice.
I don’t have a dirty job anymore, but the dirtiest job I’ve had by far was industrial carpenter. I’d go to work with clean jeans and a clean white shirt, and every day I’d come home with jeans that were black from the knees up, and a shirt that was black from the chest down.
I had to wear white shirts because nothing else would come clean. Only white with a lot of bleach would give any appearance of being laundered after a day at work on that job.
I still have a T-shirt from that job, some-odd 20 years later, and it has Hilti C100 industrial epoxy stains all over it, just as hard as the day the shirt was stained. That’s my “shit’s about to get real” work around the house shirt.
what about industrial carpentry caused that?
Working up in the rafters for concrete tilt-up buildings that had already been in service for decades. There’s so much nasty-ass grime up there, and years worth of dust and crud.
crud being a technical term I assume
I believe the industry standard term is “fucking bullshit”. ie. “Now I’ve got this fucking bullshit all over me!”.
I work as an assembler in a sporting goods store. I assemble bicycles, indoor and outdoor furniture, bbqs, snowblowers, lawnmowers walk behind and rideon), log splitters.
