Your Labors

[steelslaver]

Hey, all you guys that helped build America.

Those of you who worked the trades,

Thanks for your hands, now gnarled, your backs, now aching, your legs now worn. Without you, no food, no roads, no gas, no electricity, no homes, no cars, trucks, trains, planes, ships or rockets.

We may have the arts, colleges, theaters, movies and plays, but without the luxury and security provided by OUR LABOR we could not afford tto indulge in such luxuries. The stock market would not exist if LABOR did not provide a product.

There are a lot more brains walking around under a hard hat, with actual tools than most most people think. Engineers can design all the things they can imagine. They are only paper and grapics until LABOR actually makes it happen. Be proud of yourselves. I am.


Thank you fellow LABORERS

 

[armorer951]

Amen.....and to our veterans and active duty people, for keeping our country FREE. Thank you.

 

[NYlakesider]

Hey, all you guys that helped build America.

Those of you who worked the trades,

Thanks for your hands, now gnarled, your backs, now aching, your legs now worn. Without you, no food, no roads, no gas, no electricity, no homes, no cars, trucks, trains, planes, ships or rockets.

We may have the arts, colleges, theaters, movies and plays, but without the luxury and security provided by OUR LABOR we could not afford tto indulge in such luxuries. The stock market would not exist if LABOR did not provide a product.

There are a lot more brains walking around under a hard hat, with actual tools than most most people think. Engineers can design all the things they can imagine. They are only paper and grapics until LABOR actually makes it happen. Be proud of yourselves. I am.


Thank you fellow LABORERS

You make me blush! (But I like it)

My biggest contribution a good chance I stopped a newly minted engineer from blowing up a plant!

 

[Onomea]

Was going to comment in the thread yesterday on kids staying at home into adulthood. Discussion touched on the scarcity of jobs for young people. I think part of the scarcity is that kids nowadays don’t do manual labor. Unskilled manual labor is mostly reserved for illegals/migrants.

When I was young, manual labor was where everybody started. My first time full-time jobs out of high school were manual labor. The point was to make some money, and for the young and strong, that was a surefire way to do so. If ya worked hard, ya got promoted. Supervisor, manager, etc. I did that all through college. It wasn’t until I got to grad school that part time work evolved to desk work.

In later years, chained to a desk, when many days seemed like I had just juggled ten things badly all day rather than one thing well, I’d reflect that an advantage of manual labor is you can see your progress, and know when you are done. I slept better then than I did in my later career. Less stress, too.

For those who made a career of it, well done.

 

[steelslaver]

Quite a few guys I worked tools with went on to work offices. But, the majority never forgot where they came from or how it really was. Most of them started out doing something with their hands before they finished HS. Knowing how to actually work and what it takes always makes for a better manager. IMHO

 

[JBTrucker]

I grew up in Memphis TN. with International Harvester , Humko and other industries nearby . You could see smoke stacks and hear the whistles blow at noon and shift change . Older boy I knew told me he started International shoveling coal into furnaces. I worked at a hardware store and a lot of the older workers and retirees had missing digits. He's been gone for several years my uncle retired from Ford 1980's . He worked hard and raised four kids in 3 bedroom house in Ypsilanti MI. When visiting would let me take a swig of bourbon kept stashed under drivers seat of his LTD

 

[Maddog 521]

steelsayer----Thanks
I worked the trades from 1968 until 2008 and enjoyed almost every minute of it. I met a lot great people and I saw a lot of the USA. I do believe that there are many young people that would benefit starting out as an apprentice in one of the many trades that are in desperate need of new people.

 

[JJEH]

Thank you all!!!

 

[Grayfox]

I've know a lot of people with fancy degrees that were dumb as a box of rocks.
I've never met a skilled craftsman who didn't have common sense.

 

[quikdraw67]

I was on the other side of the counter for years but I listened and learned from the plumbers and heating guys. Plus I went to training every chance I could.
I think I'm a pretty good plumbing tech.
The only certificates I have say Gould Pumps and Beckett burners. But I've made a decent living out of it.
And yes, started at the bottom putting boilers in basements.
Manual labor indeed.

 

[Kinman]

Brings to mind a common saying we used while in the Union...You can thank the Unions for the Weekend.

 

[Toolguy]

I've spent 45 years as a machinist and Tool & Die Maker. It has been a very satisfying way to earn a living. It's pretty cool to be able to make anything you can dream up.

 

[tops]

I always wanted too be a cowboy or lumberjack but couldn't figure out how too make a living at either one. I worked as a utility lineman and was still climbing poles until I was 60 1/2. In a few weeks I'll be 79 and I have aches and pains but I'm glad that I did the work I did. I also was a volunteer fireman for 20 years and I'm glad I got too do that. Both jobs were go day or night and the weather didn't matter when there was a problem. Larry

 

[Peak53]

I spent the first half of my adult life on construction sites, mostly as a brick/stone/block mason and secondarily as a carpenter. I developed a high level of appreciation for those folks that get up early, go work hard, eat, go to bed, and get up early all over again. Salt of the earth. There is treasure there. The second part of adult life was in an office, which brought its own rewards, and saved my joints (kind of), but I still love looking at something I built decades ago and thinking, "that's going to be there for a long, long time." Very satisfying. We owe a debt of gratitude to the un-sung that do the hardest work.

 

[arjay]

It wasn’t a bad life. I worked for myself from 30 on,made a nice living and didn’t have to put up with difficult people for very long.Id do it again [emoji16]

 

[wood714]

I worked in the same trade for 32 years.

Didn't build anything thou.

I did print payroll checks for a lot of large companies for 14 of those years, so I guess I helped a lot of people get paid.

 

[bricker]

I spent the first half of my adult life on construction sites, mostly as a brick/stone/block mason and secondarily as a carpenter. I developed a high level of appreciation for those folks that get up early, go work hard, eat, go to bed, and get up early all over again. Salt of the earth. There is treasure there. The second part of adult life was in an office, which brought its own rewards, and saved my joints (kind of), but I still love looking at something I built decades ago and thinking, "that's going to be there for a long, long time." Very satisfying. We owe a debt of gratitude to the un-sung that do the hardest work.

Bricklayers rock! (see what I did there!)

 

[anoblefox]

Greyfox, I concurr with your observation. There are other ways to measure a person's intelligence. As an example I that have posted here before, as follows.
Engineering vs. Common Sense
A toothpaste factory had a problem: they sometimes shipped empty boxes, without the tube inside. This was due to the way the production line was set up, and people with experience in designing production lines will tell you how difficult it is to have everything happen with timing so precise that every single unit coming out of it is perfect 100% of the time. Small variations in the environment (which can’t be controlled in a cost-effective fashion) mean you must have quality assurance checks smartly distributed across the line so that customers all the way down to the supermarket don’t get ticked-off and buy another product instead.
Understanding how important that was, the CEO of the toothpaste factory got the top people in the company together and they decided to start a new project, in which they would hire an external engineering company to solve their empty boxes problem, as their engineering department was already too stretched to take on any extra effort.
The project followed the usual process: budget and project sponsor allocated, RFP, third-parties selected, and six months (and $8 million) later they had a fantastic solution — on time, on budget, high quality and everyone in the project had a great time. They solved the problem by using high-tech precision scales that would sound a bell and flash lights whenever a toothpaste box would weigh less than it should. The line would stop, and someone had to walk over and yank the defective box out of it, pressing another button when done to re-start the line.
A while later, the CEO decides to have a look at the ROI of the project: amazing results! No empty boxes ever shipped out of the factory after the scales were put in place. Very few customer complaints and they were gaining market share. “That’s some money well spent!” he says, before looking closely at the other statistics in the report.
It turns out the number of defects picked up by the scales was 0, after three weeks of production use. It should’ve been picking up at least a dozen a day, so maybe there was something wrong with the report. He launched an investigation, and after some work, the engineers come back saying the report was actually correct. The scales really weren't picking up any defects, because all boxes that got to that point in the conveyor belt were good.
Puzzled, the CEO traveled down to the factory, and walked up to the part of the line where the precision scales were installed.
A few feet before the scale, there was a $20 desk fan, blowing any empty boxes off of the belt and into a bin.
“Oh, that,” says one of the workers — “one of the guys put it there cause he was tired of walking over every time the bell rang”.

 

[steelslaver]

The US space program millions figuring out how to make a pen that would work in a weightless environment. Ever notice how a normal pen will not write long held upside down? Need gravity to make the ink flow down.





The Russians used pencils in space.

 

[Old 44 Guy]

I worked for Ma Bell 38 years. Lineman, splicer, installer, repair tech, line assigner, etc. Some of the engineers were behind the door when brains were given out.

 

[BC38]

The last 20 years of my career were as an engineer in middle management.

But before that I spent 10-15 years working a wide variety of jobs, including several years of construction (finish carpentry, and masonry), oil field roughneck, warehouseman, backhoe operator, even automotive graphics & pinstriping, before getting my education. It made me a better engineer, because I learned a lot about how things really work and how they get built before learning how to design and calculate them on paper.

The other side of the coin is that all the laborers in the world aren't going to build a bridge or a skyscraper or a car or an airplane without an engineer first designing it. Both laborers and engineers are important parts of the whole.

 

[carpriver]

I got my start as a 13 year old throwing hay bales, I dug a a drain field for a septic system, got paid .25 cents and hour, racked yards, split fire wood for other people, work as a bar back, dish washer, fry cook. before getting a job in a tool and die shop running a lathe. then I graduated from high school and joined the service. I was 21 years old when I was made a supervisor. I took care of my troops. I did every job they did, a good leader or supervisor leads by example.

 

[BC38]

I got my start as a 13 year old throwing hay bales...

LOL, they let you wait 'til you were 13 for that? I started pitching bales at 10. That was after a summer driving the hay rake followed by a summer driving the hay truck. My third year in the fields I was bucking bales! Of course at 10 I was well over 5' tall and weighed about 140-150lbs.

 

[mtgianni]

I was happy to graduate from the family farm to the family drain cleaning business at age 15. I played with wrenches for a few years on tractors but went back to pipe from ages 22 to 63.

 

[soFlaNative]

Both laborers and engineers are important parts of the whole.

Only real problem I've had is generally after the fact when the truth sets in as they realize they are only engineers.
A design can be bulletproof yet once the bean counters have their way with the specs, the manufacture, build and install takes place and then the laborer who shows up to repair wonders out loud who in the name of Sweet Sally Sunshine came up with this stinkpile guess where the fingers will point?

 

[steelslaver]

I have meet some brilliant engineers. I have also had to explain that water will not run uphill to one. To actually get their ticket they should have to actually built stuff for a few years.

Set of exchangers had shell nozzles so short you could not remove the studs that held flanges closed and therefore could not replace the leaky gasket without disconnecting all the piping and lifting of top 2 shells. Then one night they blew up and killed 7 of my co workers. ([ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vPaQYM-tWsDesign[/ame] (design flaw. ) Hydrogen embrittlement. If hot passes would have been in tubes instead of shells leak would have been contained. Yes, I was the foreman of the maintenance contractors in THAT UNIT. My crew and I tore them down for cleaning every 6 months. But, anyway. New exchangers ordered. These with longer nozzles and flow change. Engineer got hands on it and changed from repads on shell to double thickness nozzle tube design. New exchangers came. Because of double thickness nozzle design there is again no way to change out studs or gaskets and because they did the same thing on channel heads you have to assemble them together and hang them as a set instead of one at a time. Way to go Nit Wit.

I am not an engineer. But, I bet I could design and build a suspension bridge. I studied a small one and have actually built some small bridges.

I double guarantee you I would have made sure the new exchangers could have the gaskets changed out. I actually understand how it works in the real world. Not on a screen.

No the flanges were not the reason they blew up. But, they were the reason all the operators were there.

 

[zeke]

First good paying job was in construction. 10 years heavy construction, including pushing crete, laying pipe (water/sewer/storm water) and occasional road building. Am old enough to have laid clay pipe, pick ballast and hand finish/joint concrete. Then got engineering degree at age 35. The construction experience paid off in many ways, the least not being taken for yuppie pond scum when on construction site, and blunt manner.

Appreciate the compliment.

 

[Grayfox]

42 years as a mechanic. I've worked on everything from lawn mowers to earth movers. I learned very early in my career that engineers/designers never take into consideration that sooner or later somebody will have to take whatever it is apart to fix it. What should be a 10 minute job turns into full day because of all the stuff you have to get out of the way so you can reach whatever it is you need to fix.

 

[steelslaver]

Takes me about 4 hours of contortions to remove the alternator from my Ford Escape (done it twice as replacement failed) and another 4 hours to put new one back in. A better idea was to bury it down against the passengers side floor board, making it necessary to have ducting to remove the heat. On my truck I replaced it in about 30 minutes. Bet the guy who figured out how to mount the Escape alternator was being more money than a mechanic.

Story goes Ford had a bunch of leaky windshields. Most of them all of them leaked. But, upon investigation engineers discovered that only those put in on one assembly line on night shift didn't leak. They go to that line at night and observed them installing windshields. They were NOT following the engineers procedure! When asked about it the foreman told the engineer, Ya, thats because if you do it by the procedure they would all leak.

 

[dave1918a2]

After the Military and a couple of jobs I got a construction job building sewage treatment plants. You know. The ones with the big round tanks for mixing and the big square ones for aerating and the pumping stations to send the crud to the drier. Poured over 250K yards of concrete, and actually pulled out the sandbags when the connection was made to the old plant. Showered for two days and used up 3 bars of soap. Great Super tho. He jumped in first and then said ' get in here and help Me.'